Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	age_n	church_n	time_n	2,142	5	3.6322	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64144	Via intelligentiæ a sermom [sic] preached to the University of Dublin : shewing by what means the scholars shall become most learned and most usefull : published at their desire / by ... Jeremy, Lord Bishop of Downe, &c. ...	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1662 (1662)	Wing T416; ESTC R23462	32,047	72

is the author of Truth so he is the teacher of it and the way to learn it is this of my Text For so saith our blessed Lord If any man will do his will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God or no. My Text is simple as Truth it self but greatly Comprehensive and contains a truth that alone will enable you to understand all Mysteries and to expound all Prophecies and to interpret all Scriptures and to search into all Secrets all I mean which concern our happinesse and our duty and it being an affirmative hypotheticall is plainly to be resolved into this Proposition The way to judge of Religion is by doing of our duty and Theology is rather a Divine life then a Divine knowledge In Heaven indeed we shall first see and then love but here on Earth we must first love and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts and we shall then see and perceive and understand In the handling of which Proposition I shall first represent to you that the certain causes of our Errors are nothing but direct sins nothing makes us Fools and Ignorants but living vicious lives and then I shall proceed to the direct demonstration of the Article in question that Holinesse is the only way of truth and understanding 1. No man understands the Word of God as it ought to be understood unlesse he layes aside all affections to Sin of which because we have taken very little care the product hath been that we have had very little wisdom and very little knowledge in the wayes of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Aristotle Wickedness does corrupt a mans reasoning it gives him false principles and evil measures of things the sweet Wine that Ulysses gave to the Cyclops put his eye out and a man that hath contracted evil affections and made a League with sin sees only by those measures A Covetous man understands nothing to be good that is not profitable and a Voluptuous man likes your reasoning well enough if you discourse of Bonum jucundum the pleasures of the sense the ravishments of lust the noises and inadvertencies the mirth and songs of merry Company But if you talk to him of the melancholy Lectures of the Cross the content of Resignation the peace of Meeknesse and the Joyes of the holy Ghost and of rest in God after your long discourse and his great silence he cryes out What 's the matter He knows not what you meane Either you must fit his humour or change your discourse I remember that Arianus tells of a Gentleman that was banished from Rome and in his sorrow visited the Philosopher and he heard him talk wisely and believed him and promised him to leave all the thoughts of Rome and splendours of the Court and retire to the course of a severe Philosophy but before the good mans Lectures were done there came 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 letters from Caesar to recall him home to give him pardon and promise him great Imployment He presently grew weary of the good mans Sermon and wished he would make an end thought his discourse was dull and flat for his head and heart were full of another storie and new principles and by these measures he could heare only and he could understand Every man understands by his Affections more then by his Reason and when the Wolfe in the Fable went to School to learn to spell whatever letters were told him he could never make any thing of them but Agnus he thought of nothing but his belly and if a man be very hungry you must give him meate before you give him counsell A mans mind must be like your proposition before it can be entertained for whatever you put into a man it will smell of the Vessell it is a mans mind that gives the emphasis and makes your argument to prevail And upon this account it is that there are so many false Doctrines in the only Article of Repentance Men know they must repent but the definition of Repentance they take from the convenience of their own affaires what they will not part with that is not necessary to be parted with and they will repent but not restore they will say nollem factum they wish they had never done it but since it is done you must give them leave to rejoyce in their purchase they will ask forgivenesse of God but they sooner forgive themselves and suppose that God is of their mind If you tye them to hard termes your Doctrine is not to be understood or it is but one Doctors opinion and therefore they will fairly take their leave and get them another Teacher What makes these evil these dangerous and desperate Doctrines not the obscurity of the thing but the cloud upon the heart for say you what you will He that hears must be the expounder and we can never suppose but a man will give sentence in behalf of what he passionately loves And so it comes to pass that as Rabbi Moses observ'd that God for the greatest Sin imposed the least Oblation as a she-Goat for the sin of Idolatry for a woman accused of Adultery a Barly-cake so do most men they think to expiate the worst of their sins with a trifling with a pretended little insignificant repentance God indeed did so that the cheapnesse of the oblation might teach them to hope for pardon not from the Ceremony but from a severe internal repentance But men take any argument to lessen their repentance that they may not lessen their pleasures or their estates and that Repentance may be nothing but a word and Mortification signifie nothing against their pleasures but be a term of Art only fitted for the Schools or for the Pulpit but nothing relative to practice or the extermination of their sin So that it is no wonder we understand so little of Religion it is because we are in love with that which destroyes it and as a man does not care to hear what does not please him so neither does he believe it he cannot he will not understand it And the same is the Case in the matter of Pride the Church hath extremely suffer'd by it in many ages Arius missed a Bishoprick and therefore turned Heretick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the story he disturb'd and shaked th● Church for he did not understand this Truth That the peace of the Church was better then the satisfaction of his person or the promoting his foolish Opinion And do not we see and feel that at this very day the Pride of men makes it seem impossible for many persons to obey their Superiors and they do not see what they can read every day that it is a sin to speak evill of Dignities A man would think it a very easie thing to understand the 13. Chapter to the Romans Whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the Ordinance of God and yet we know a generation of men to whom these words were so obscure that

Religion and little Godliness it would not be that there should be so many Quarrells in and concerning that Religion which is wholly made up of Truth and Peace and was sent amongst us to reconcile the hearts of men when they were tempted to uncharitablenesse by any other unhappy argument Disputation cures no vice but kindles a great many and makes Passion evaporate into sin and though men esteem it Learning yet it is the most uselesse Learning in the world When Eudamidas the Son of Archidamas heard old Xenocrates disputing about Wisdom he asked very soberly If the old Man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning Wisdom what time will he have to make use of it Christianity is all for Practice and so much time as is spent in quarrells about it is a diminution to its Interest men inquire so much what it is that they have but little time left to be Christians I remember a saying of Erasmus that when he first read the New Testament with fear and a good mind with a purpose to understand it and obey it he found it very usefull and very pleasant but when afterwards he fell on reading the vast differences of Commentaries then he understood it lesse then he did before then he began not to understand it For indeed the Truths of God are best dressed in the plain Culture and simplicity of the Spirit but the Truths that men commonly teach are like the reflexions of a Multiplying-glasse for one piece of good money you shall have forty that are fantasticall and it is forty to one if your finger hit upon the right Men have wearied themselves in the dark having been amused with false fires and instead of going home have wandered all night 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in untroden unsafe uneasie wayes but have not found out what their Soul desires But therefore since we are so miserable and are in error and have wandered very far we must do as wandring Travellers use to do go back just to that place from whence they wandered and begin upon a new Account Let us go to the Truth it self to Christ and he will tell us an easie way of ending all our Quarrells For we shall find Christianity to be the easiest and the hardest thing in the World it is like a secret in Arithmetick infinitely hard till it be found out by a right operation and then it is so plain we wonder we did not understand it earlier Christ's way of finding out of truth is by doing the will of God We will try that by and by if possibly we may find that easie and certain in the mean time let us consider what wayes men have propounded to find out Truth and upon the foundation of that to establish Peace in Christendom 1. That there is but one true way is agreed upon and therefore almost every Church of one denomination that lives under Government propounds to you a Systeme or collective Body of Articles and tells you that 's the true Religion and they are the Church and the peculiar people of God like Brutus and Cassius of whom one sayes Ubicunque ipsi essent praetexebant esse rempublicam they suppos'd themselves were the Commonwealth and these are the Church and out of this Church they will hardly allow salvation But of this there can be no end For divide the Church into Twenty parts and in what part soever your lot falls you and your party are Damned by the other Nineteen and men on all hands almost keep their own Proselytes by affrighting them with the fearful Sermons of Damnation but in the mean time here is no security to them that are not able to judge for themselves and no Peace for them that are 2. Others cast about to cure this evil and conclude that it must be done by submission to an Infallible Guide this must do it or nothing and this is the way of the Church of Rome Follow but the Pope and his Clergie and you are safe at least as safe as their warrant can make you Indeed this were a very good way if it were a way at all but it is none for this can never end our Controversies not onely because the greatest Controversies are about this Infallible Guide but also because 1. We cannot find that there is upon Earth any such Guide at all 2. We do not find it necessary that there should 3. We find that they who pretend to be this Infallible Guide are themselves infinitely deceiv'd 4. That they do not believe themselves to be Infallible whatever they say to us because they do not put an end to all their own Questions that trouble them 5. Because they have no peace but what is constrained by force and Government 6. And lastly because if there were such a Guide we should fail of Truth by many other causes for it may be that Guide would not do his duty or we are fallible followers of this infallible Leader or we should not understand his meaning at all times or we should be perverse at some times or something as bad because we all confesse that God is an Infallible Guide and that some way or other he does teach us sufficiently and yet it does come to passe by our faults that we are as far to seek for Peace and Truth as ever 3. Some very wise men finding this to fail have undertaken to reconcile the differences of Christendom by a way of moderation Thus they have projected to reconcile the Papists and the Lutherans the Lutherans and the Calvinists the Remonstrants and Contra-emonstrants and project that each side should abate of their asperities and pare away something of their propositions and joyn in Common terms and phrases of Accommodation each of them sparing something and promising they shall have a great deal of peace for the exchange of a little of their opinion This was the way of Cassander Modrevius Andreas Frisius Erasmus Spalato Grotius and indeed of Charles the Fifth in part but something more heartily of Ferdinand the Second This device produced the conferences at Poissy at Montpellier at Ratisbon at the Hague at many places more and what was the event of these Their parties when their Delegates returned either disclaimed their Moderation or their respective Princes had some other ends to serve or they permitted the Meetings upon uncertain hopes and a triall if any good might come or it may be they were both in the wrong and their mutuall abatement was nothing but a mutuall quitting of what they could not get and the shaking hands of false friends or it may be it was all of it nothing but Hypocrisie and Arts of Craftiness and like Lucian's man every one could be a Man and a Pestle when he pleased And the Council of Trent though under another cover made use of the artifice but made the secret manifest and common for at this day the Jesuits in the Questions de auxiliis Divinae gratiae have prevailed with the Dominicans to