Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	scripture_n	true_a	word_n	14,064	5	4.9051	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46721	The third letter from W.J. to the Reverend Doctor Wallis, professor of geometry in Oxford upon the subject of two former letters to him, concerning the Sacred Trinity.	W. J.	1693 (1693)	Wing J53; ESTC R39010	9,224	19

temporal or eternal neither Christian Religion nor humane Wisdom so far as I can judg will justify such Proceedings These Considerations we have taken from the Doctrine of Decrees and Prescience which according to the Deductions of our Reason destroy our Liberty of Will and Use of Prayer And seeing we must allow our Ratiocinations to be false or defective in these Points methinks it should make us tender and fearful how we trust to them in other Points of an infinite Nature and that we should not dare to add or superstruct upon such Divine Mysteries a Set of humane Thoughts and Consequences much less to give them the same Authority with the primary Revelation Neither is it only in Divine Truths that we find our Consequences uncertain and fallacious but also in Natural Truths that lie more within the Compass of our Understanding and even in that Order and Kind of natural Truths that are thought of all others to be most evident and demonstrable I mean in Geometry and Mechanicks How many have found the Perpetual Motion and the Quadrature of the Circle if their Consequences be true for they generally begin from true Principles and pursue them with all the Care and Exactness they are able and conclude with a great Assurance that they have committed no Error that all their Deductions are clear and distinct and consequently their Conclusion is as infallible as humane Wit can make it Yet the World is satisfied that neither the Circle is squared nor the Perpetual Motion found out and consequently that humane Ratiocinations though from true Principles are very subject to Error In like manner in that noted Problem about the Divisibility of a Body we are assured that our Faculties deceive us when they present us unanswerable Demonstrations on either side And if Revelation had declared whether Part was true we should notwithstanding draw the same Absurdities from either side of the Conclusion These are plain and known Instances of the Uncertainty of our Faculties in things difficult and abstruse whether Divine or Natural and may shew us the Danger of stretching Mysteries upon their Authority further than they are revealed and imposing upon others our own Productions and Subtilties for the Word of God It may be very proper also to consider in what manner God Almighty is pleased to treat us that we may learn how to treat one another in Matters of Speculation and such things as concern the Divine Nature I mean to consider the general Stile of Scripture and that Condescension it uses when it speaks to us concerning God and Things Divine which is commonly in a Stile that sutes rather to our Apprehensions than to the absolute Nature of the things themselves Scripture speaks of God as of a Being that hath Passions like a Man and with Members and Motions as if he had a Body such as ours We cannot understand the true manner how God an immutable Being is sometimes pleased sometimes displeased and therefore in condescension to our Weakness he is represented with Passions and contrary Affections as Men have We cannot understand the true way of the Divine Activity or how God acts upon things without him and therefore he is represented to us with Hands and Instruments in his Hands and Motion from Place to Place In like manner God is represented to us with Organs of Seeing and Hearing because we cannot apprehend the true way of God's knowing and perceiving things without him But this is all in condescension to our Infirmities that these practical Notions of God might be suted to our Capacity and so have a greater Influence upon us Thus God deals with us but we seem to deal with one another in a quite different way We seem to affect Difficulties and to take Pleasure in setting Man's Understanding upon the rack and making it confess more than it knows We refine upon the Mysteries revealed to us in Scripture and what is summarily and generally expressed there we beat out into a Multitude of Particularities and then stamp them into Articles of Faith God seems to make things accommodate to our Understanding as much as may be that so they may make some Impression upon us We on the contrary make them unaccommodate and inconceivable and so they make no Impression upon us And I 'm afraid most Men when they repeat certain Passages of the Athanasian Creed feel no more Sense under the Words they pronounce than a Child does when it repeats things got by rote and apprehends only the Sound or now and then a Word without Connection of Sense The Holy Ghost in Scripture seems to consider Practice and Usefulness more than Notion and Speculation and depresses things below their true State many times to make them more sutable to our Capacities Whereas we in a contrary Method strain the greatest Mysteries without any Relation to Practice or Usefulness and force those Doctrines higher than Scripture hath set them by nice Inferences of our own making And not content with this in our private Thoughts which are allowed to every Man we make them Laws to others and Rules of our Christian Faith I might ask these Scholastick Heads what Benefit is it to the People to be taught these Subtilties about the Trinity of what Use or Edification Does it make them more vertuous more honest in their Callings more dead to the World Does it impress more of the Fear of God upon their Minds or more of Charity to their Neighbours What piece of Christian Morality does it promote Opinions do not work like Charms without any Connection betwixt the Cause and the Effect and what is unperceived by the Understanding hath no Effect upon the Will Neither is it conceivable that God should make it a necessary Condition of our Happiness to believe a Mystery or incomprehensible thing further than he hath plainly revealed it We must be able to give a Reason of our Faith and we must not resolve our Faith into humane Authority But to add no more in the last Place I desire those Persons that are so disputacious about the Holy Trinity to consider the Greatness and Glory of those Natures about which they venture to argue and dispute with so much Freedom If it was a common Subject any part of the natural World or any created Being we might make bold with our Fellow-Creatures to canvass and examine all the Secrets of their Natures But there is greater Caution and Reverence to be used as to the Divine Nature And especially as to the Trinity which is the very Secret of the Divine Nature and therefore should not be pry'd into further than it hath pleased God to reveal it We should rather silently admire and humbly submit to that Mystery as it is delivered in the Words of Scripture than add to it by our own Invention The Jews had so great a Reverence for the Name of God I mean the Tetragrammaton that they did not dare to pronounce it nor take it into their Mouths that