Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	authority_n	prove_v	tradition_n	2,724	5	8.9814	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59251	A vindication of the doctrine contained in Pope Benedict XII, his bull and in the General Council of Florence, under Eugenius the III concerning the state of departed souls : in answer to a certain letter, printed and published against it, by an unknown author, under this title, A letter in answer to the late dispensers of Pope Benedict XII, his bull, &c., wherein the progress of Master Whites lately minted Purgatory is laid open and its grounds examined ... / by S.W.	Sergeant, John, 1622-1707.	1659 (1659)	Wing S2599; ESTC R12974	85,834	208

Tradition faded and dwindled into this mysterious expression That the Errour of a Council though promulgated should not pass into an established Doctrine of the Church as delivered by Fathers and preached by Christ by which he brought all into his own power again And when he had thus as he thought cut all the sinews of Christian-Beleef the mystery of all the design is discovered We must be governed by Faith no longer Christ with his Doctrine hath possessed the Chair long enough Master White with his Demonstrations must now take place And least my Adversary should tell me I do him wrong in asserting That after the rest he hath now laid Tradition aside I desire him and his solid cleer-sighted Friends to give me a Catalogue of all those Doctrines he admits into his new Theology or prooves in his Institutiones sacrae which are to be our Scriptures Fathers Councils School-men for the future by Tradition or on the score of Authority Nor let him complain I impose a heavy task upon him Those who are acquainted with every Ressort of his Doctrine will quickly answer it The Catalogue will proove so slender so short it will cost him no considerable Pains I could comprehend them All in this one Word Nothing For in truth there is none at all So safe a truth it is that in lieu of Faith and Christian Religion we have nothing in this School but under the title of Peripatetick and Sacred Institutions an Epicurean Lucretian Phylosophy or rather a medley of both theirs and Aristotles Phylosophy and Pretended Demonstrations not of our Faith as Catholiques have hitherto understood it but as now changing quite the Notions of the Mysteries he is pleased to understand it Of which we shall see more hereafter Sect. 26. Why then should we wonder at the Issues of this Brain What should we wonder at these Productions which out of an absolutely erroneous Method were hatched and brought to light It is no marvel if a most Exotick Phylosophy being presupposed an equally or more Exotick Divinity is built upon it A little Errour in the beginning prooves a great one in the last end The attempt to square Theology to I know nor what pretended Demonstrations hath wrought this destruction Nor need we the help of Divinity Our own Experience and Reason sufficiently evince and discover this method to be ruinous There is no man who hath made even a moderate progress in Sciences but is sufficiently convinced how weak how feeble our Understandings are They are but Novices in Sciences who are puft into a vanity as if they were even now become Masters The better Proficients they grow the more daily and howrly do they cleerly discover their own Ignorance Let 's consider it in particular there is no knowledg so certain so connatural to our undexrstandings as that of Quantity the Object of Mathematiques and yet all the wit of men that ever yet have been in the world come so far short of the discovery that millions of Problemes might yet be proposed which no man can solve And now as to our knowledge of Natural Bodies it is far inferior to the former for of these we scarce understand any thing at all Who ever comprehended the Composition the Properties or even the Essential notion of a Fly What Physitian ever understood fully the Nature the operations the effects of any one Herb any one Simple Who ever knew how Rubarb works on the innumerable parts of our bodies how it purges how it refines how it abates how it heightens the several humours of it St. Basill understood our weakness much better who in his 168 Epist. to Eunom prosecuting this subject proposes above twenty questions to which twenty and twenty more may be added of a contemptible Emmet In none of which the wit of man can satisfie his curiosity And if we are thus short in those things we daily converse with which we touch and tast what will our knowledge amount to in Separated Substances in Souls in Angels in God himself The true ground of this our ignorance being this That our understandings in our present state of mortality being onely naturally moveable from our Phansies which depend wholly on the weak reports drawn from our Senses we have not in this state without Revelation any other notions but such as are abstracted from sensible Objects so that the peculiar properties of abstract Substances since we are not now possest of the peculiar essential notions of them can not now by us naturally be known And hence it is that finding our selves so feeble in things the most obvious even to our senses all the Wise men of the World have ever been struck dumb and ravisht in the consideration of that Omnipotent hand which built both us to honour and love him and them for our use to that end so that where his Authority is ingaged as certainly it is in all things that apperrain to Faith we abase our prying proud curiosity and square our weak apprehensions to them and not these stupendious supernatural Mysteries to our creeping groveling apprehensions of Nature It was then upon this mistake that this new Purgatory came to light it is one and but one of a thousand of those unheard of productions this new Phylosophical Theology is stuft with I could give my Reader many instances of Doctrines he never yet not indeed the world was acquainted with but I will conclude with that very Doctrin because it offers it self as neer allyed to this our present Subject with which he concluds his Demonstrative Divinity It is concerning the Damned Souls for we have not onely a Poetical Purgatory he hath also furnisht us with a most Romancical Hell and who can but smile to think of those ridiculous mimick postures he fancyes of Horse-coursers Dancers Fencers Bowlers and all other Brutals attempting now in Hell in all their several postures those very pleasures in which they constituted their final end in this life Thus then of those Souls he concludes Their misery sayes he depends on their present perverseness so that if they themselves would they might even yet be happy Out of the force and series of Nature of which they are parts nothing better to wit then to be damned could happpen to them neither to All of them in general nor to Any one of them in particular And least Nature or God should escape this Fatall Doctrin he adds And even Nature and God himself should have been worse if they had been otherwise dealt with Pagan Fatality Out of the force and Series of Nature nothing better could happen to Iudas then to be damn'd and if he had not been so God had ceased to be God as so forsooth Wisdom is justified against her children Thus he concludes his Prodigious Theology Sect. 27. And now I hope my Reader hath some light of the Method and Genius of this our great Master and his new School It will give him an introduction into the further discovery of