Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	see_v	word_n	4,495	5	4.2390	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45646	A refutation of the objections against moral good and evil in a sermon preach'd at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, October the third, 1698 : being the seventh of the lecture for that year, founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. / by John Harris.	Harris, John, 1667?-1719.	1698 (1698)	Wing H854; ESTC R23964	16,783	31

are some Stupid and Barbarous People among whom no such thing can be discovered For my part I do most heartily believe that 't is impossible for a Rational and Thinking Mind acting as such to be insensible of the Difference between Moral Good and Evil I cannot Imagine that such a Person can think it a thing indifferent in its own Nature whether he should Venerate Love and Worship the God that made him and from whom he derives all the Good he can possibly enjoy or whether he should Slight Despise Blaspheme or Affront him It seems utterly impossible to me that any thinking and considerate Man should judge it an indifferent thing in its own Nature whether he should honour and reverence his Father or abuse him and cut his Throat or that he can esteem it to be as good and decent a thing to be Ungrateful or Unjust as it is to acknowledge and to return a Kindness to render every one their Due and to behave our selves towards others as we would have them do towards us I do not think that the Instances produced by a late Ingenious Writer of some wild People's exposing their Sick and Aged Parents to die by the Severities of Wind and Weather nor of others who eat their own Children are of force to prove that there is really and naturally no difference between Good and Evil any more than I will believe that he cited those Passages with a design to make the World think so for I think allowing the truth of all these Relations no such Inference can be thence deduced A Practical Principle of the Truth and Power of which a Man may be demonstratively assured may yet be over-born in some Respects by other Opinions which Ignorance and Superstition may have set up in a Man's Mind This Gentleman saith p. 25. Of Human Understanding That a Doctrine having no better Original than the Superstition of a Nurse or the Authority of an Old Woman may be length of time grow up to the dignity of a Principle in Religion or Morality Now should a precarious and wicked Opinion over-rule a Man in one or two particular Cases and carry him against the Rules of Morality will it follow from thence that a Man doth believe those Rules of no Natural Force and that it is an Indifferent thing whether he observe them or not Ought I to conclude that because I have read of a King that Sacrificed his Son to Moloch that therefore he believed it as good and reasonable a thing to burn his Children alive as to preserve take care of them and give them a good Education Certainly 't would be a fairer and more reasonable Inference to conclude that his Reason and Natural Affection was over-power'd by his Idolatrous and Superstitious Opinion and that the reason why he did such a Wicked and unnatural Action was because he expected some very great Benefit for it from the Idol or that he would Inflict some very great Judgment upon him if he did not do it And so in the Cases above-mentioned one may well enough believe that those Barbarous and Inhumane Wretches that Starved their Parents and Eat their Children did not nor could not believe it was as good and reasonable so to do as it would be to preserve them but only that they were under the Power of some Wicked Superstition or Abominable Custom that had unhappily crept in among them which they thought it a greater Evil to break if they thought at all than they did to Act against their Judgment Natural Reason and Affection For this way as he observes 't is easie to imagine how Men may come to worship the Idols of their own Minds grow fond of Notions they have been long acquainted with there and stamp the Characters of Divinity upon Absurdities and Errors c. p. 26. So that I cannot see any Consequence at all in asserting the Non-existence of Moral Good and Evil from a few Barbarous and Ignorant Wretches doing some Actions that bear hard on the Rules of Morality For notwithstanding that they may be lost in a great measure in some places yet these things and many others that might be instanced in do certainly carry such Self-evidence along with them that a free and unprejudiced Mind must needs perceive which way to determine as soon as ever they can be proposed to it and considered of by it For any one in the World that doth but understand the meaning of the Terms in any of the lately mentioned Moral Propositions will be demonstratively assured of the Truth of them And he will see as clearly that God is to be worshipped that Parents are to be honoured and in a word that we ought to do to others as we would be done unto as he assents to the Truth of such Axioms as these That a Thing cannot be and not be at the same Time That Nothing hath no Properties And that the whole is greater than any one and equal to all its Parts taken together For the Reason why all Mankind allow these as first Principles is because their Truth is so very Apparent and Evident that they approve themselves to our Reason at first sight And so I think do all these Great Principles in Morality they certainly affect impartial and considerate Minds with as full a Conviction as any of the former can possibly do And would no more have been denied or disputed than the others are had they not been Rules of Practice and did they not require something to be done as well as to be believed For he that rightly understands what is meant by the words God and Worship will see the Necessary connexion between those Terms or the Truth of this Proposition God is to be worshipped as evidently as he that knows what a Whole and a Part is will see that the Whole must be greater than a Part. And no Proposition in Geometry can be more demonstratively clear than these Moral ones are to Men that are not wilfully Blind and wickedly Prejudiced against such Practical Truths For as one hath well observed Morality may be reckoned among those Sciences that are capable of Demonstration And that these Moral Truths have a stronger connexion one with another and a more necessary Consequence from our Idea's and come nearer to a perfect Demonstration than is commonly imagined insomuch that as he saith in another place They are capable of real Certainty as well as Mathematicks Now if the case be so as most certainly it is it will plainly follow that Those things that do thus demonstratively approve themselves to the unprejudiced Reason of all Mankind must be good and lovely in their own Natures or Morally so antecedent to the Obligation of Human Laws Customs or Fashions of particular Countries And in this plain Distinction between Good and Evil which our Reason when duly used Impowers us thus at first sight to make is founded that which we call Conscience which is a kind of an Internal