Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	church_n	council_n	tradition_n	4,496	5	9.0822	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60590	Two compendious discourses the one concerning the power of God, the other about the certainty and evidence of a future state : published in opposition to the growing atheism and deism of the age.	Smith, Thomas, 1638-1710.	1699 (1699)	Wing S4254; ESTC R4066	40,478	66

communion If in things which are plainly and confessedly possible in themselves we are not to engage the infinite power of God without a just cause nor to think God almighty obliged to make good our groundless and extravagant phansies much less are we to destroy the nature of things and swallow down and maintain real and manifest contradictions and make that which would be one of the greatest wonders of the world supposing that it were possible to be done ordinarily and every where and every day a thousand times without any other proof than our bare phansying so as they do who maintain the doctrine of Transsubstantiation in all the School-niceties of it against Scripture and reason against the principles of nature and philosophy against the attestation of sense and the judgment of antiquity and against the experience of all mankind and do all this rather than admit of a figurative expression in the words of the Institution In favour of this monstrous tenent the Romanists object to us the incomprehensibility of the mysteries of faith and hence think that they may elude all those unanswerable difficulties which this new doctrine is charged with and that there is argument enough to satisfie their doubts in that misapplyed saying the effect it may be of rapture and indiscreet devotion Ideo credo quia est impossibile But the great disparity which is between them is easily obvious to any one who will give himself leave to consider things calmly and fairly and not suffer himself to be imposed upon by a pretense of an authority absolutely to be obeyed and submitted to as well in doctrine as in matters and decrees of discipline without the least scruple and hesitation As 1. That there is the highest reason in the world to believe the mysteries of faith tho' they transcend our utmost capacity because they are expresly and clearly revealed in the writings of the new Testament It is the greatest security of our faith imaginable that God has said it and therefore let the thing revealed seem never so unlikely and harsh to my understanding I have as much reason to believe it as any thing which happens ordinarily every day and presents it self to my senses nay more for there is a possibility that a particular person may be deceived sometimes not to say all mankind even in a matter of sense but there is an utter impossibility that God should be deceived in any proposition he has thought fit to reveal But this they will not pretend to say for their Transsubstantiation that there is the same evidence of Scripture for it or indeed that they have any evidence at all as many of their own party have confessed and for want of which they have recourse to the authority of the Church Besides their greatest stress for the proof of it wholly lyes upon a gross and unnatural sense of words which are capable of a far easier and more agreeable interpretation especially when the other words used by our B. Saviour in the blessing and consecration of the wine are most certainly and undeniably figurative 2. These articles are essential to the Christian faith the doctrine of it cannot be entire without them and besides they were explicitely believed and assented to as to the matter of them from the first ages of Christanity tho' there were some disputes raised about the terms by which they were expressed and a latitude used in the explication of them and the disbelief or denial of them was justly branded with the odious name of heresie in general Councils and the dissenters anathematized and thrust out of the communion of the Church and the true doctrine of the Christian religion as delivered by Christ and his Apostles secured and established against the corruptions and innovations in after-times by publick Creeds universally received Whereas this is a meer novel doctrine first brought into the Church the better to establish the gross errors and superstitions relating both to the opinions and practises of Image-worship and advancing by degrees in times of horrible ignorance and corruption of manners till it came first to be decreed and established an article of faith by the Assessors of the Lateran Council besides it does no way serve or promote the interests of Christianity but does very much prejudice it and expose it I am sure to the contempt of the enemies of it both Turks and Jews who choose rather to continue in their infidelity than submit to it upon their first disbelieving their very senses 3. There is a vast difference between them in respect of their subject-manner Things relating to God are above the level of our understanding most of our little knowledge being derived from sense which cannot reach those objects that are altogether abstracted from it whereas this falls under the examination of our senses and reason they are things we every day converse with things we may safely pretend to judge of as being every way proportionable to our faculties 4. These articles of faith involve in them no true and real contradiction as the doctrine of Transsubstantiation does The Christian religion proposes nothing to our belief but what is possible and therefore credible as has been proved by several learned men of our Church against the heterodoxies and blasphemies of the Socinians nothing which contradicts or thwarts the common and established notions of nature I say the doctrine of it as it is contained in the Scripture and according to the ancient tradition of the Catholick Church and the explications of the first oecumenical Councils to both which tradition and authority next to the sacred Scripture which is the rule of faith we ought to have regard even in controversies of faith and not as it is perplext and entangled by the bold niceties of the School-men who have corrupted the truth and simplicity of the Christian religion by the mixtures of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle So that we do not limit the divine power or deny it to be infinite as the bigotted Romanists pretend because we reject this figment of Transsubstantiation as a false absurd and contradictory doctrine besides the other above-mentioned exceptions which no sophistry or cavil can honestly and truly put by or justly satisfie which they ought to prove to be in the number of things possible All which we believe from the nature of this attribute as we are obliged that God can do 2. The second proposition is this that nothing can hinder the effects of God's power if once he has willed and determined the same And of this truth both of nature and religion the very Heathen had a fixt belief and apprehension viz. that all opposition made against God was vain and ineffectual and that though some according to the fictions of their Poets were so foolish as well as impious to make a war upon the Gods and attempted to pluck Jupiter out of his throne yet they always came by the worst and were cast down from their hopes and