Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	apostle_n	speak_v	word_n	3,803	5	4.2444	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A94756	A designe about disposing the Bible into an harmony. Or, An essay, concerning the transposing the order of books and chapters of the holy Scriptures for the reducing of all into a continued history. The [brace] benefits. Difficultie. Helpes. / By Samuel Torshel.	Torshell, Samuel, 1604-1650.	1647 (1647)	Wing T1936; Thomason E377_9; ESTC R201360	14,721	35

that as Eckius said he chose the points of predestination that upon them he might exercere juveniles calores make triall of his youthly heat so these take the sacred Oracles of God upon which to make their raw and imperfect essayes And ordinarily as the most learned men are scepticall and but little positive so the weakest men are most magisteriall and cry out like the Mathematician at Athens I have found I have found it when they light upon a notion which seems new to them but it may be might be had in twenty Authors which they know not But the most of those that are unlearned and unstable doe wrest the Scripture as the Apostle speaks thinking they finde that in it which is not it They bring an opinion with them and with that they reade the Bible all along imagining that they see it every where before them like the man of whom the Philosopher spake who thought he saw his own shape before his eyes at every step he took A strong imagination or fancie will perswade very much and beguile both the eye and the ear As for instance Some when they look up to the racke or moving clouds imagine them to have the form of Men of Armies of Castles Forrests Landskips Lyons Bears c. where none else can see such things nor is there any true resemblance of such shapes And for the ear when a man hath somewhat that roules and tumbles in his thoughts he will think that the ringing of bells the beating of hammers the report that is made by great gunnes or any other measured or intermitted noise doth articulately sound and speak the same which is in his thoughts In this same manner many perswade themselves that the Scripture represents to them such and such formed opinions while they patch and lay things together without any reason like children looking upon a wall will fancie an armed man or some other thing such a spot to be the bulk of the body such another spot to be the head some other scratches or flawes to be the legs or armes with weapons whiles another perhaps at the same time imagines the same spots to resemble a Dragon and a third that they resemble a Ship or what else may indeed be most unlike a man We could not have thought what vanity there is in the imagination of men if somewhat had not been testified to us of old by the Apostle who tells us of the Gentiles How their foolish hearts were darkned Rom. 1. ver 21. and by the Ancients Augustine Philastrius and others who have recorded the strange and senselesse dotages of many hereticks and of late in the ridiculous papers that have flown about and bring Scripture with them but no sense fancying the holy word of God to strike to ring or chime to their tunes The Apostles Peter and Jude speak of dreamers sure there are many such now A man that is awake we know may think of a golden house the way to which paved with rubies and Saphires the wall plaistred with pearl and the gate one entire Diamond but his externall senses not being hindred with other witnesse and information his internall sense gives judgement aright but when the outward senses are locked up by sleep then those vainest fancies are entertained without controul Such danger is there when to use the Apostles phrase Heb. 5.14 men have not their senses exercised to discerne both good and evil But yet a greater mischief ariseth out of a corrupt and depraved minde and affection according to that of St Paul 1 Tim. 6.5 perverse disputings of men of corrupt mindes When the Appetite or affection is eager and stayes not the leisure of deliberation but outruns it so as not to be recalled then the minde is drawn to be of the same opinion with the appetite and takes up what is fancied as true and what is affected as warrantable that at length the beguiled man believes himself He that looks upon an unlovely thing with the eye of love thinks it lovely so that that is false seems true to him that strongly affects it He that is extreamly athirst drinks down that with pleasure which if he were not so distemperd would offend his tast and very much nauseate his stomack I might instance in many the like deceits and inconveniences growing partly from depravednesse of minde partly from ignorance partly from instability suddennesse and haste when men take a snatch and run away with that which looks like the sense of Scripture as if they had gotten somewhat that made much for them and weary themselves about them like the Apes in the story who finding a glo-worm in a cold night took it for a spark of fire and heaped sticks upon it to warm themselves So doe they lose their labour who are busie about sounds of words and incoherent-Scripture-sentences But I have not spoken all this with a minde to defraud the faithfull of their Right even their Right to Judge of what is written The sentence of the great Apostle resolves and directs me in this who applying himself to the Community of Believers at Corinth saith even to all I speak as to wise men judge ye what I say 1 Cor. 10.15 And in after times the Christians held themselves in possession of it Theodoret in the 4th book of his History cap. 19. gives us a notable testimony When Euzoius the Governour of Alexandria had thrust out Peter the orthodox successor of Athanasius and had placed Lucius an Arrian in that Church the people having been brought up under Athanasius doctrine perceiving contrary food provided for them they would not hear but forsook the ecclesiasticall meetings That that God hath given to the people let none presume to take from them Let us rather renew the earnestnesse of Chrysostome and others of the Antients to perswade and encourage them more to the reading and examining of the Scriptures Take not away the book only spread it more open The ministery ecclesiasticall was appointed to this end and to this end were gifts given unto men To this purpose many have profitably laboured The Ancients framed their Commentaries Enarrations Scholies Glosses Metaphrases Paraphrases Homilies In the severall ages there have been some or other as I have particularly mentioned in my forenamed Historicall Preface to Malachy that have applied themselves to this work but more abundantly in these later times Only whereas the difficulty and obscurity of Scripture is in great part because of the Anticipations Transpositions and Dislocations of whole books or some parcels of the sacred Canon we are yet wanting to our selves and to our clear understanding of the whole Scripture that the whole hath not been digested into one continued History according to the order of times which would make the work of Commenting and Interpreting much more easie and the whole Context altogether more clear This therefore is it which I have humbly to offer 1. To propose and open the Designe about the Harmonizing

we shall not know where to finde any thing That may be easily helpt by marginall Columnes all along throughout with the Context and a Table or Index at the end of the whole In most places there will need but two Columnes for a great part none at all where the History or Book runs along without dislocation or insertion and in no place above four as in the Evangelists unlesse haply a fifth Columne somewhere there if it be judged fit to insert Judes Epistle into the History of the Evangelists concerning which for the present I Quaerie At the end may be an Index of two Columns In the first the Books Chapters and verses in the order as they lye now in the Bible And in the other the Books and Chapters of the Harmony it being divided into so many Books and Chapters as may be most for ease Whereby may presently be found in what part of the Harmony any Chapter Verse or Sentence of the whole Bible lies As for example Genesis Harmony ch ver lib. ch 1. 1. to 27. 1. 1. The Harmony being thus framed throughout there may be some marginall directions where they are necessary to give the reasons of the Transitions Insertions Transpositions and of the whole order The Benefits THe benefit of such an Harmony will be greater then we can fully comprehend till we have the use of it It will help much toward the making up an exacter Scripture-Chronologie It will serve abundantly to the clearing of the genuine and historicall meaning of the Text every where As for instance The Sermons of the Prophets though as they were laid up and preserved by the Sanhedrim are delivered unto us in a body as the learned Elders digested them yet they were applied at severall times in the severall emergencies of affairs of the two Kingdoms of Judah and Israel and upon severall occasions which being found out will make us as it were present auditours of those Prophets and in the quality of those to whom they were directed So the Psalms were written by severall men at severall times and those of David not all at once We shall know the temper of their spirits upon what motives upon what rejoycings upon what fears or distresses or accidents they were composed Take one example Psal 90.10 The anthour of that Psalm passionately complains of the shortnesse and misery of mans years The dayes of our years are threescore years and ten c. But it concerns not all men and times Only Moses who seems to have been the authour of that Psalm complains upon an occasion peculiar to that time and that people whom he governed It was the word of the Lord concerning that generation when they provoked him in the wildernesse that none of them should enter into his rest nor see the good land but that all their carcasses should fall in the desert that occasioned this complaint A strange and and unusuall thing that of 600000. souls men of able constitutions and lying under no epidemicall disease none except two persons Caleb and Iosuah should out-live threescore and ten years or at utmost but fourscore that were twenty years of age at their coming forth of Egypt We may take another example Psal 27.13 I had fainted unlesse I had beleeved to see the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living What was that land of the living that David speaks of When he made this Psalm he was forced from Ierusalem where he was wont to live in society with men and now shifted up and down among grott's and caves and solitary holes as if his dwelling had been among the Sepulchers of the dead The occasion then enlightens the Psalm if we insert it into that part of Davids story The literall historicall sense of Scripture we must first build upon else in mysteries and Allegories we may sooner be fine and witty then sound Hierome confesseth his own youthly vanity in interpreting Obadiah's Prophecie When I was young saith he I interpreted the Prophet allegorically because I was ignorant of the History I thought then I could read a sealed book No man can write so ill but some will like it Such an one praised it but I blush't I now freely professe that was the work of my childish wit this of my mature age Many undertake Scripture as if they could reade a sealed book and perhaps many praise them for lofty and raised notions but where is their Authority when they lose the genuine and litterall meaning of the holy Pen-man Isidore Pelusiota hath observed That wheras the Manichees thought that no part of the old Testament spake of Christ some in his time went to the other extream thinking all to be spoken of him and so brought a discredit upon the true testimonies when wrong ones were wrested Weaknesse of proof brings the greatest prejudice against the truth Divines have given out some observations for the understanding how Scripture is fulfilled either 1. When the thing is done or comes to passe which was meant by the Prophet in his litterall and proper sense Or 2. When that comes to passe which was fore-shadowed by the proper and immediate subject of the Prophets speech Or 3. When the thing that happens was not litterally and properly pointed at nor fore-shadowed but aptly and handsomely applied to and compared with somewhat like it Or 4. When that which was fore-told or fore-shadowed though it have been already done in part or have been begun to be done is afterwards done more fully or else more constantly It being possible that the same Scripture may be fulfilled often yea in the same litterall sense Now an Harmonious historizing of the Psalms and the Prophets and the like will lead us more clearly to know the immediate subject of what was spoken give us hints to discern what was higher and further meant yea possibly more then what themselves understood in the words that themselves spake For the Scriptures being given for the instruction and use of all succeeding ages It may be that the Prophets knew not all that they delivered and which the sense of their words might be afterwards improved unto Daniel was a man full of the Spirit of God and much travelled in Revelations yet he knew not the then approaching time of the Jews liberty till that in the first of Darius he learned more then was immediately inspired unto him by Books that had been written by Prophets before him Dan. 9.2 In the first year of Darius raign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the Prophet No doubt he diligently satisfied himself unto what year of Jeremies publique Ministery those predictions Chap. 25.11 12. and chap. 29.10 were made Some Prophets knew more and some lesse They saw for after times but often themselves saw but what concerned the present times places and affairs It was said to Daniel himself Chap. 12.4 O Daniel shut up the words and seal the