Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	apostle_n	believe_v	scripture_n	1,763	5	5.6732	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67834	The wisdom of believing in two sermons preach'd at court, April 7, and 14. 1700 / by E. Young ...	Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.	1700 (1700)	Wing Y72; ESTC R517	27,122	76

consequence will any deny That Faith to what is Revealed is a Due which we owe not only to God for the Honour of his Truth but likewise to our selves for the sake of our safe Conduct And therefore there is like to be no Dispute whether Faith in general can make Men Wise The Dispute is only upon this Point What kind of Faith in particular it must be that makes Men Wise And we shall find that the Judgment of Mankind lies under a common Prejudice against what is true in reference to this Point For we may observe it to obtain in the World That the Faith adapted to make a Wise Man must be a Cautious and Reserved Faith because all Forwardness in Believing exposes Men to be deceived And yet in Holy Scripture we are taught clean contrary That God is only pleased with an Humble and Ready Faith and every Abatement of Forwardness is a Diminution of its Value Our Saviour in his Walk to Emmaus calls his Disciples Fools because they were slow of Heart to Believe And soon after he tells Thomas That the Tardiness of his Faith had robb'd it of its Blessing For Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed And because I am falln upon the mention of this Apostle I will choose to insist a little upon his Character which may serve both for an Example and an Illustration of the matter I am upon Thomas as far as we may learn by all the mentions made of him in Holy Writ was a Man Bold in Reasoning and extreamly Nice in Believing Which is a Character that by the standard of the present Age has Licence to pass for an Indication of Wisdom Joh. 14. 2 3 4. We have a Passage of Discourse wherein this Apostle was wholly concern'd There our Saviour says very obligingly to those about him In my Father's House are many Mansions I go to prepare a place for you And whither I go you know and the way you know To this obliging Declaration Thomas answers very peremptorily Lord we know not whither thou goest and how should we know the Way We see the Answer is directly contradicting to that which our Saviour alledged and yet no doubt but the Apostle thought himself to have Reason on his side for making such an Answer Let us imagine what that Reason might be 'T is possible he might form his arguing on this manner Lord Thou sayest Thou art going to thy Father's House to provide Mansions for us Now we know thy Father's House according to natural Generation is that of Joseph and Mary in which many Mansions are not to be had But if thou meanest a Father by any other kind of Generation or any other Inheritance which thou hast a Title to recommend us to This is what we do not understand and what we do not understand it is impossible for us to Believe And therefore say to us something that we may believe or in the mean time permit us to be Incredulous and to say We know not whither thou goest If I have in this Form Argu'd any thing contrary to the Sentiments of the Apostle I have whereof to Retract in reverence to his subsequent better Understanding But I fear I have said nothing that the present Age will require me to Apologize for Because they who set up for a leading Genius please themselves to argue in the very same Method to justifie a like Incredulity Thus runs the common Argument We cannot believe what we please we must comprehend both the Matter and its Credibility or else it were Rash and Foolish to believe it Joh. 11. We have another Passage wherein Thomas was wholly concern'd There verse 14. our Saviour says to his Disciples Our Friend Lazarus is Dead and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there to the intent you may believe This we see our Saviour urged expresly for an Encouragment of their Faith and yet Thomas his Reasoning turned it immediately into an Argument of Distrust As is apparent from what he said to his Fellow Disciples upon this Occasion verse 16. Let us also go That we may Dye with him The Key of his meaning in this Sentence we may take from the Narration in the beginning of the Chapter Where 't is sai'd That our Saviour being then in Galilee upon the News of Lazarus his Sickness proposed to go into Judea to visit him Whereupon the Disciples answer'd V. 8. Master the Jews of late sought to Stone thee and goest thou thither again Now this Thought made a deep Impression upon the wary Imagination of Thomas and therefore when he saw his Master resolved to go he wound up all into this sort of Reasoning Despair Lazarus is Dead and all his Pains and Fears are over and better it were for us if ours were so too The Jews Malice is bent upon the Destruction of us all and if our Master could not save his principal Friend from Death what hopes is there of his saving us Let us go then and meet our Doom as patiently as we can This is the natural Paraphrase of what Thomas meant by that Sentence Let us also go that we may Die with him And altho' nothing could be more contrary to the Faith he ow'd his Master or more affronting to the importance of what he had then said yet still he lookt upon this as sound Reasoning And indeed it was as sound as any other Man's is and brought forth as good Fruits as any other Man's does when it once takes Licence to Scruple what it ought to believe The last mention of this Apostle is in the Instance of the Resurrection He had been told that our Saviour was Risen from the Dead and the truth of it had been attested to him by Evidences beyond Exception Several Companies who had seen him and converst with him several times to whom he had expos'd the sight and feeling of his Wounds to whom he had Expounded the Scriptures concerning himself with whom he had broken the Sacramental Bread and conferr'd on them the operative Benediction of Receive ye the Holy Ghost All these with all these convincing Tokens had told Thomas that Christ was Risen But yet Thomas in pure Wisdom would not believe He was also called Didymus says the Text And I think that Allegation how casual soever it may seem is Argumentative to my purpose viz. Thomas had a Greek Name as well as a Hebrew one which is a probable Argument that he had had a Conversation with the Greeks and perhaps had learnt from them That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Have a care of being Credulous was the grand Advice of one of their Sages and thereupon he resolved not to believe without farther Conviction than all this And no doubt but he conceiv'd Reason to be on his side for all this Behaviour Reason suggested that a wise Man ought to be cautious to the utmost least he be impos'd upon Reason suggested that when he had his Choice of several

his Spirit should lead them into all Truth and yet for such a Tract of time the whole multitude of Christians should account it impious to believe That which now the Polish Catechism says It is damnable not to believe when it is propos'd So that if Christians were saved before that time in the Common Faith it was from the Apology of their Ignorance as their Ignorance was because they had not a Socinus to instruct them Say rather why the Deists may not as colourably Reject the Scriptures as the Socinians Own them with so many contradictions to God's Truth and Goodness In due Reverence to both these Attributes of God we are obliged to affirm that the Sense as well as the Letter of the Scripture in all Matters necessary either to be done or believed hath been the Depositum of the Church and Faithfully Preserv'd under it's Keeping That the whole Faith which as the Apostle says was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at once delivered unto the Saints had at the same time its Meaning delivered which from them has been derived by indubitable Testimony as the Matter of our uniform Belief That the different Opinions Sects and Factions in the World are no Argument against This Because as St. Peter has warn'd us They who diversifie the Common Faith do not Interpret but Wrest the Scriptures and as St. Paul has observ'd Divisions and Heresies spring not from Ignorance but from Carnality not from want of Light but want of Love Pride and Envy and Contention and Vanity and such contrarious Passions have in all Ages not been at a Loss for Truth but have been contriving and setting up somewhat they liked better And let us see in the next place what it was that the particular Affections of Socinus liked better than the received Interpretations He and his Party are pleas'd to take offence that there are any Mysteries in Religion They will have nothing for the Object of our Faith but what is plain to our Understanding and easy to our apprehension and altho' they will not affirm that Reason has the Measure of what is or what may be yet they resolve Reason to have the Measure of what ought to be believed Which I think is Absurdity sufficient They conclude thereupon that the Doctrine of the Incarnation that is of God Taking our Flesh and dwelling among us must not be believed because it is Irrational And as for the Doctrine of the Trinity it would be offensive to pious Ears to repeat those expressions of Reproach with which they load it They say that these Doctrines do justly scandalize Jews and Turks and hinder them from coming in to our Religion But as it is no Office of Civility to complement away our Faith so neither is it any Office of Charity in the Socinians to go off from the Foundation to meet Jews and Turks and to turn Half-Infidels that They may turn Half-Christians But after all when by the grossest wresting of Words and abuse of plain Sense they have shewed themselves as much Friends to Fancy as they are Enemies to Faith after that they have interpreted all Mysteries out of Religion and so made their new Hypothesis familiar and inoffensive and therefore Credible as they would have us imagine We must pronounce upon it what Minucius sometimes did in the like Case In Incredibili Verum in Credibili Mendacium Truth still lies on the Incredible and Falshood on the Credible side And to justifie this Censure let us confider That the Mystery of any thing or what is all one The Abstruse or Incomprehensible Nature of any thing is no Argument against our believing it This is a Rule I am sure that holds true in Nature and then with what Face can we deny it to hold true in Religion We surrender our Faith to the state of all Visible things without comprehending them and what Obstinacy is it then to refuse our Faith to the Things of God under the same Condition It would be an affront and calumny to Nature to affirm that Those things which are before us those Works of God which lie every Moment under our Senses are simply Credible that is such as our Reason would Perswade us could be if we had not seen them to be How short is our Plummet from Fathoming the Essence Mode Powers Operations Productions of the most common Beings Undoubtedly had we the Knowledge of this World we live in as we have that of its Maker only from a Book I say had we the Knowledge of this World we live in only from a Book we should be Tempted to treat that Book with as little Reverence as the Socinians or Deists have done the Holy Scriptures And conclude that most of the things that are in it were as Incomprehensible Impossible and therefore Incredible as they fancy any thing to be that God has revealed concerning himself Let me produce an Instance or two and those out of the Holy Scriptures to inculcate by the way That the Philosophical Truths we meet with there are Venerable as well as the Divine In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth says the Sacred History Where the Word Created is interpreted by all to mean That God made the World without any Pre-existent Matter to make it of Now this Production of the World we believe from the Authority of the Report and likewise because of the Absurdities that necessarily follow from the Supposal of the contrary And yet Human Reason could never form any Idea whereby to conceive the Possibility of such a Production And let any one say whether it be harder to believe That the Divine Essence did from everlasting emanate or flow into Three Social and Co-eternal Subsistences than to believe That in the Beginning of Time All things were made out of Nothing Or whether-Reason has more Arguments to plead for the One than for the Other Holy Job to exemplifie the Power of God pitches upon this Instance ch 26. 7. He hangeth the Earth upon Nothing or as his Expression points elsewhere He maketh it stand firm without a Foundation Now when we find it impossible for the utmost Art of Man to make a small Clod of Earth hang in the Air It is naturally Impossible for Man to conceive how the whole Mass should hang in the Air T is true when we see how things are we Pride our selves in assigning of Reasons why they must be so but all fall short of solving the Difficulty Center or Magnetism or whatever Notions have been espoused will not Solve it in the present Instance No Cause could make the Earth hang upon Nothing but the Omnipotence of that Will that ordered it to be so Nor could we ever believe it but from a Submission of our Faith to that Omnipotence Or from a Submission to our Senses even while they control and muzzle the Reluctancy of our Reason For another Instance of the Incomprehensible Works of God The Sea is alledg'd in the same Book cap.