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truth_n believe_v pleasure_n unrighteousness_n 2,527 5 11.3215 5 true
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A43805 The necessity of heresies asserted and explained in a sermon and clerum / by the author of the Catholic balance and published as a consolatory to the Church of England in the days of her controversie ... Hill, Samuel, 1648-1716. 1688 (1688) Wing H2010; ESTC R32969 19,436 34

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ungodly unto strong delusions that they should believe a lie to the end they might all be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness But since this is not the design but the event only of these Divine Methods upon the finally Incorrigible and there are many gracious ends to the good of all Men in God's permission of actual Heresies in which consists this moral Necessity of them mentioned by the Apostle We are now smoothly brought to the third Consideration What is the Moral Necessity for their being in the World. That therefore is Morally necessary which either the Rules of Duty or Dictates of Wisdom recommend and this either strictly so that the omission will be either a fault or a damage or else more freely in such a latitude that though the omission be not injurious yet the observation will be expedient in which latter degree and sense Moral Necessity is no more than Rational Convenience and amounts not to the force of a rigorous Obligation And both these kinds of Moral Necessity may be either absolute in the nature and reason of the things themselves or relative to antecedent Causes of which they are consequential or to final Issues to which they are ministerial by a Moral influence and motion on the Mind Which being thus premised it is natural to resolve that the Moral Necessity of actual Heresies descends not from any Laws of Duty but from the Reasons of Wisdom which upon an antecedent Supposition of wicked Men and secret Hereticks in the Church proposes the detection of them in a manifestation of their Principles extremely beneficial and convenient First To the Hereticks themselves in order to their conversion Secondly To the Wavering in order to their probation and settlement And thirdly To the Approved and Faithful in order to their glory First then The permission of actual Heresies is intended by God to the good of Hereticks many ways For first While Men kept their Heresies close within their secret Cells the Catholick Doctors not discerning the Hearts make no direct applications to them to reform and cleanse them So that detection is necessary in order to their better instruction And secondly During the secrecy of Heresies within the Breasts of Men they fondly imagine that upon a discovery they will take mightily in the World and charm great multitudes of Men into rapture and admiration and that no Man will be able to gainsay them But so it always happens that tho Fools and Wretches may be imposed upon yet the Wise and best part of Mankind will despise and abominate what the Hereticks thought would ravish them And thus collecting all their force of Truth and Wisdom will baffle and confound them and hiss them off the Stage and expose them to the publick Sense of Men as the Pests of Religion and Agents of the wicked One. Which Issues so defeating the false Hopes and Expectations of the Heretick together with the convictions of Truth to be found in the Labours of those that refute him the general contempt and abomination past upon him the reverberations of his Conscience deserted by the Spirit of God and scourged by the Spirits of Darkness whom he served are proper and forcible motives to Humiliation and Repentance which nought but an habitual and obdurate Stupor can resist And yet if these prove ineffectual the Lenity of God uses other means to tire them out of their own Follies For when men have once forsaken the way of Truth they travel into perplexing and endless mazes from one Error to another either successive and consequential or else casual and collateral For as Theodoret observes The ways of Falsehood are cross and intricate so that in those that are bewildred in them is fulfilled that of the Psalmist They went astray in the Wilderness out of the way and found no City to dwell in Hungry and thirsty their Soul fainted in them And being in such a desert state they will if at all or ever be apt to relent And to cry unto the Lord in their trouble to deliver them out of their distress to lead them forth by the right way that they may go and dwell in the City that is refreshed with the streams and fountains of living waters Secondly The diffusion of open Heresies contributes to the probation and settlement of wavering indifferent and ungrounded Souls For in times of Ignorance or Carnal security many Men attend not to the force or design of Religious Institutions but sleep on supinely in the implicit Faith of the fashionable Religion In which case and state of drowsiness no moral or external Good is so apt to excite men to a severe enquiry and study of True Religion as the outrage of Heresies which startle Men out of their heavy Lethargy yea even out of their Graves by a quick and forcible Resurrection crying as it were aloud with the voice of a Trumpet and that a Trumpet of War too in the ears of every such dull and doating Christian Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light To this end God sometime permitted false Prophets to arise and to tempt his People to Idolatry that he might try and confirm them Thus Moses If there arise among you a Prophet or a Dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign or a wonder And the sign or wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go serve other Gods c. Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that Dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul viz. Permitting such Temptations to arise not to be of equal force with the Miracles of Moses and Prophets but only strange enough to startle the Careless and the Improvident and to try them by the Prodigy and to provoke them to compare it with the Testimonial Fortifications of Moses and the Prophets and thus finally to instruct and confirm them in the Laws and Ordinances of the God of Israel Thus at the entrance of Christianity our Lord foretold That many false Prophets and false Christs should arise and shew great signs and wonders and deceive many Behold saith he I have told you before That we might not believe every Spirit but try the Spirits whether they are of God when many-false Prophets are gone out into the World. Thirdly the Divine Permission of Heresies is useful to the manifest justification of the Faithful and the Faith. For while the truth of our Faith meets with no opposition Men are generally content with the simplicity of its Tradition in Creeds and summary Abstracts of Christian Doctrine and with the plain sense of the obvious and easie Scriptures But when it 's attacked by Heresies and false Principles pretendedly deduced from Divine Authority this puts the Zeal of the Faithful into a mighty fervour to trace