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	young_a	youth_n	222	4	8.1811	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36736	A treatise against irreligion. By H.C. de Luzancy, priest of the Church of England, and M. of Arts of Christs Church in Oxford	De Luzancy, H. C. (Hippolyte du Chastelet), d. 1713.	1678 (1678)	Wing D2423B; ESTC R201393	39,690	201

consideration whether he that far from swiming in wantonness has scarce time to live had rather give over the hopes of eternal happiness than to deprive himself of those sinful joyes he never did and never shall possess And for them that lie under sickness let any wise man judge whether he that has lost the strength both of his body and mind and entertains no other commerce with men but that which tends to his recovery is to prefer that little he has left him to the probable hopes of an endless felicity But why is the question confined to three or four sorts of men Let that choice be offered to all Trades-men Plowmen Merchants Souldiers Seamen c. Sure there is none so stupid as to prefer the hardships of their lives to that eternity of happiness Christian Religion induces us to hope Irreligion therefore cannot be the Religion of those men It can admit none for its Votaries but young rich robust people abundantly provided with all the ease plenty and pleasure this life can afford No other condition is fit for it Nay they must be secure of persevering in the shining flourishing state they are For should any revolution spoile them of their Estates any sickness enfeeble their bodies or if they live to old age their very choice which they look'd upon before as rational will appear to them foolish and extravagant Nay they will not stay so long Half a day is more than sufficient to pull down the magnificent engine of their opinions That which was true in the morning whilst they had their health will be false deceitful erroneous ridicule in the evening if they are wounded or dangerously sick And though they seem then unwilling to alter their mind eitherout of obstinacy or shame yet they cannot persevere in it without proclaiming themselves fools There remaining to them only some moments of life deprived of all pleasure and attended with torments 't were ridicule beyond what can be imagined to prefer them how present and certain soever to the hopes of eternity how doubtful and distant soever it appears If then Religion is to be preferred to Irreligion when poverty sickness or old age full upon us Is Irreligion to be preferred to Religion when Youth Ease Plenty and Health leave nothing to our desires to lust after Is not truth the same in our young as in our old dayes Is there a Religion for the Rich and another for the Poor Certainly the truth of those things and much more that of God depends not upon the alterations of our lives It is still the same notwithstanding the different dispositions or opinions we are in Nor can Irreligion shelter it self in that vast number of Christians who by falling into sin fer no less than they the enjoyment of transitory things to the promises of the Gospel Though it may be confest with grief that all that has been said against the irreligious may in some sense be applied to them yet there is an infinite difference between them When Christians fix their heart on transitory things they do it not in consequence of their belief They acknowledge that they act contrary to their Principles They accuse and condemn themselves If they sin therefore 't is not out of any Irreligious principle which perswades them to prefer the present to the future and what they enjoy to what they hope In their very sins they believe still the words of Christ and trust his Promises But the corruption of their Nature oversways in them the Dictates of their Faith An incomprehensible weakness the first sin left on them renders them more eager after present things though nothing comparable to the absent They are carried away through a violent passion which conceals the horror of sin from the eyes of their souls or trusts too much upon God's mercy What can hence the Irreligious conclude unless it were this that humane nature is depraved and men act against their own principles which shall be easily granted But considering this maxim in it self and independently from the dispositions of particular men does any thing evince more palpably that it is false than the ordinary course of the world There is no man but leaves a thousand times in his life the certain for the uncertain A merchant ventures his mony which is certain against a very uncertain gain A Conqueror ventures that peace he enjoyes at home against a very doubtful success A Plowman a Souldier a Pilot venture what they have against probable hopes of getting more Nay upon this Maxim Of leaving the certain for the uncertain turns all the commerce of mankind since they disturb their quiet which is the thing they are most secure of to come to what they pretend which is full of uncertainty CHAP. VII The true Notion of this Maxim of St. Austin Tene certum Dimitte incertum FRom all that has been said it is easie to conclude the falshood of that maxim that the certain is to be preferred to the uncertain Now to judge how far it may be true we need consider but this that when we are irresolute 't is alwaies either upon the ends we propose our selves or the means to attain them From whence these three Propositions fall naturally 1st When we are agreed upon the end and only doubt which means are surest to attain it 't is the greatest madness in the world to leave the certain for the uncertain to part from a way which leads infallibly to Heaven and engage in another which perhaps may end in Hell And this Principle proclaims the madness of the new Doctrine of Probability that Monster brought up by the Jesuits for the total extinction of the small remains of Christianity in the world For since all Christians agree upon the end they aspire to and which is more upon the means Christ has givenus in the Gospel what is there more void of sense than to leave them for by-wayes unknown and untrodden paths 2ly When the end is not agreed upon and that our mind is at a loss upon which to fasten it self it is to be examined whether those ends are equally advantagious to us as whether the gain exceeds considerably the venture and then the certain is infallibly to be preferred to the uncertain 'T were indeed an inconceivable madness to venture an advantage quietly possest against another of equal worth but uncertain All the reward of your labour if you succeed is to be in the same state that you were in before and if you miss to lose both what you possess and what you hope This is the case of the Duellists who venture their lives that they may get a name They lose their life which is the greatest of natural goods to win an imaginary glory which becomes after their death a real infamy to all subsequent ages 3ly If the end we pretend to are odds and the good we hope considerably greater than that we possess already the first though uncertain is to be preferred

humiliations are so far from taking away the belief of his Divinity that they enforce and support it Let them be proposed to any man of sense and he will conclude 1st That his humiliations can bring no alteration to his Divinity God being wholly immutable and incapable of decay to what state soever he is pleased to descend Periculum status sui Deo nullum est Tertul. de carn Christ 2ly That if he took upon him the vile and despicable form of a man 't was because he would have it so He could have come invested with all the majesty expected from the Son of God His resurrection his ascension his fitting at the right hand of his Father are mysteries as full of Glory as the others are of shame He is instated by them in that splendid appearance the Irreligious and Jews would have him in at the beginning So that his humiliations cannot be attributed to any want of power Nor dares the Irreligious deny these glorious Mysteries unless he resolves to yield up those he looks upon as so shameful Knowing nothing of either of those but from the relation of the Evangelists he must equally receive or reject the whole matter of fact 3ly That he did it because he would do it and that he would do it because he loved us He loved man in his miseries and infirmities and who can turn into a crime so stupendious so miraculous a charity Tert ull ib. 4ly That nothing is really low or shameful but what bears the character of sin The Greatness of God shines in the number order and motion of the Heavens Nor does he fall from his Majesty when he applies his power to the formation of the vilest insects His providence maintains them His immensity renders him present in the horridest places Nor did yet any man think all these things a shame and a reproach to him Yet almighty God is as really in them after his manner as Christ in his mysteries of Humiliation CHAP. II. Christian Religion obliges us to believe impossibilities and things beyond the reach of nature Answer THat nothing is to be believed but what is seen is ridiculous in the very doctrine of Irreligion whose abetters believe many things they never saw Who of them denies Antipodes though they never were there Who of them refuses the testimony of facts related by prophane Historians because they never saw the like Who of them disbelieves many things he has been told because some of them proved false and makes his private opinion the rule of what is credible and possible But it is demonstrable the Irreligious can deny none of those miracles which are obvious in the Scripture There are but two wayes of disproving miracles First shewing their impossibility Secondly Their want of Authority It is altogether out of their power to prove the first A miracle is either impossible as being beyond the force of nature If he thinks them impossible in that sense so far we agree Or it is impossible to God and this he cannot assert according to his own principles Or impossible in it self and this cannot be made out but by demonstrating a real certain evident contradiction in them And if we consider things in themselves what impossibility is there that a soul and body which were united a little before should join again and be in the same state they were before their separation if there is a power capable of uniting them What contradiction is there that a blind man should receive his sight a dumb man his speech a Paralytick his limbs Nature doing it often with time and remedies why cannot a superiour power do it in a moment For the second viz. Want of authority no Irreligious sure will charge them with Besides the integrity of them that transmitted them to us Besides their principle that no lye was lawful but that a lye in matter of Religion was detestable they say nothing but what they have been eye-witnesses of Some of those miracles have been believed for three thousand years and preserved by a people that has built their Religion upon them The rest have been believed sixteen hundred years since and contributed to the conversion of all the nations of the Earth Their Preachers sealed them with their blood wrought the same if not greater and induced by them an infinite number of people of all Ages and Conditions to dye for the truth of the Gospel 'T is matter of fact that before Christian Religion was brought into the world all Nations the Jews excepted were Idolaters It is another matter of fact that those Idolaters changed Religion and from Infidels became Christians And what greater proof than this can be required for the authority of miracles how could such a sudden alteration be seen in the world without an infinite number of wonders which backt and supported the Gospel Were so many millions of men meer children whose mind was altered at first sight Were they so stupid and simple as to receive any new Doctrine without discernment and upon trust Is not the History full of the strange excesses Nations ran to to defend those errors the Disciples of Christ would remove from them Could they be overcome after so long so stout a resistance by any other force than that of miracles Do not the violent and lasting persecutions of the Primitive Church evince that they were of a Religion contrary to ours How could twelve Fishermen agree upon so strange a resolution as that of delivering lyes to all the world and be so obstinate as no torments could perswade them to desist from their foolish undertaking How could so many Nations assent to lies which procured nothing to their defenders but death and sufferings How could they venture their lives to maintain and transmit them to us by a constant and uninterrupted tradition Certainly one should convince us first that all those Nations were naturally mad and apt to prefer a severe law which extends its empire to the very desires of the heart and has for its Promulgators men unknown and persecuted every where to their first Religion which put no limits to their cupidity And before any body should embrace Irreligion the Irreligious is concerned to prove by solid arguments that those changes are naturally possible and the more because they are so particular to Christianity as to be found no-where else CHAP. III. The incomprehensibility of things Christian Religion obliges us to believe answered The injustice and absurdity of that reproach THe Irreligious complains many points are proposed to his belief which it is impossible for him to understand as if nothing was to be believed but what falls under his senses Which reproach may be reduced to these two Propositions That nothing is to be believed but what may be comprehended and that things are not when they are incomprehensible Then which two propositions nothing can be imagined more impertinent Besides that thereby a weak frail blind man makes his private understanding the