Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A62619
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Sermons concerning the divinity and incarnation of our blessed Saviour preached in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry by John, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing T1255A; ESTC R35216
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99,884
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305
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plainly see this every year There are many things likewise in our Selves which no man is able in any measure to comprehend as to the manner how they are done and performed As the vital union of Soul and Body Who can imagine by what device or means a Spirit comes to be so closely united and so firmly link'd to a material Body that they are not to be parted without great force and violence offer'd to Nature The like may be said of the operations of our several Faculties of Sense and Imagination of Memory and Reason and especially of the Liberty of our Wills And yet we certainly find all these Faculties in our selves though we cannot either comprehend or explain the particular manner in which the several Operations of them are performed And if we cannot comprehend the manner of those Operations which we plainly perceive and feel to be in our Selves much less can we expect to comprehend things without us and least of all can we pretend to comprehend the infinite Nature and Perfections of God and every thing belonging to Him For God himself is certainly the greatest Mystery of all other and acknowledged by Mankind to be in his Nature and in the particular manner of his Existence incomprehensible by Human Understanding And the reason of this is very evident because God is infinite and our knowledge and understanding is but finite And yet no sober man ever thought this a good reason to call the Being of God in question The same may be said of God's certain knowledge of future Contingencies which depend upon the uncertain Wills of free Agents It being utterly inconceivable how any Understanding how large and perfect soever can certainly know beforehand that which depends upon the free Will of another which is an arbitrary and uncertain Cause And yet the Scripture doth not only attribute this Foreknowledge to God but gives us also plain Instances of God's foretelling such things many Ages before it happened as could not come to pass but by the Sins of Men in which we are sure that God can have no hand though nothing can happen without his permission Such was that most memorable Event of the Death of Christ who as the Scripture tells us was by wicked hands crucified and stain and yet even this is said to have happened according to the determinate foreknowledge of God and was punctually foretold by Him some hundreds of years before Nay the Scripture doth not only ascribe this power and perfection to the Divine Knowledge but natural Reason hath been forced to acknowledge it as we may see in some of the wisest of the Philosophers And yet it would puzzle the greatest Philosopher that ever was to give any tolerable account how any Knowledge whatsoever can certainly and infallibly foresee an Event through uncertain and contingent Causes All the reasonable satisfaction that can be had in this matter is this that it is not at all unreasonable to suppose that infinite Knowledg may have ways of knowing things which our finite Understandings can by no means comprehend how they can possibly be known Again There is hardly any thing more inconceivable than how a thing should be of it self and without any Cause of its Being and yet our Reason compels us to acknowledge this Because we certainly see that something is which must either have been of it self and without a Cause or else something that we do not see must have been of it self and have made all other things And by this reasoning we are forced to acknowledge a Deity the mind of Man being able to find no rest but in the acknowledgment of one eternal and wise Mind as the Principle and first Cause of all other things and this Principle is that which Mankind do by general consent call God So that God hath laid a sure foundation of our acknowledgment of his Being in the Reason of our own Minds And though it be one of the hardest things in the world to conceive how any thing can be of it self yet necessity drives us to acknowledge it whether we will or no And this being once granted our Reason being tired in trying all other ways will for its own quiet and ease force us at last to fall in with the general apprehension and belief of Mankind concerning a Deity To give but one Instance more There is the like Difficulty in conceiving how any thing can be made out of nothing and yet our Reason doth oblige us to believe it Because Matter which is a very imperfect Being and merely passive must either always have been of it self or else by the infinite Power of a most perfect and active Being must have been made out of nothing Which is much more credible than that any thing so imperfect as Matter is should be of it self Because that which is of it self cannot be conceived to have any bounds and limits of its Being and Perfection for by the same reason that it necessarily is and of it self it must necessarily have all perfection which it is certain Matter hath not and yet necessary Existence is so great a Perfection that we cannot reasonably suppose any thing that hath this Perfection to want any other Thus you see by these Instances that it is not repugnant to Reason to believe a great many things to be of the manner of whose Existence we are not able to give a particular and distinct account And much less is it repugnant to Reason to believe those things concerning God which we are very well assured he hath declared concerning Himself though these things by our Reason should be incomprehensible And this is truly the Case as to the matter now under debate We are sufficiently assured that the Scriptures are a Divine Revelation and that this Mystery of the Trinity is therein declared to us Now that we cannot comprehend it is no sufficient Reason not to believe it For if this were a good Reason for not believing it then no man ought to believe that there is a God because his Nature is most certainly incomprehensible But we are assured by many Arguments that there is a God and the same natural Reason which assures us that He is doth likewise assure us that He is incomprehensible and therefore our believing Him to be so doth by no means overthrow our belief of His Being In like manner we are assured by Divine Revelation of the truth of this Doctrine of the Trinity and being once assured of that our not being able fully to comprehend it is not reason enough to stagger our belief of it A man cannot deny what he sees though the necessary consequence of admitting it may be something which he cannot comprehend One cannot deny the Frame of this World which he sees with his eyes though from thence it will necessarily follow that either that or something else must be of itself which yet as I said before is a thing which no man can comprehend how it can be
have since made it a lawful way of lying which their Father of whom they learn'd it had not credit and authority enough to do And it deserves likewise to be very well considered by us that nothing hath given a greater force to the Exceptions of the Church of Rome against the H. Scripture's being a sufficient and certain Rule of Faith than the uncertainty into which they have brought the plainest Texts imaginable for the establishing of Doctrines of greatest moment in the Christian Religion by their remote and wrested interpretation of them Which way of dealing with them seems to be really more contumelious to those H. Oracles than the downright rejecting of their Authority Because this is a fair and open way of attacquing them whereas the other is an insiduous and therefore more dangerous way of undermining them But as for us who do in good earnest believe the Divine Authority of the H. Scriptures let us take all our Doctrines and Opinions from those clear Fountains of Truth not disturb'd and darkned by searching anxiously into all the possible Senses that the several words and expressions of Scripture can bear and by forcing that sense upon them which is most remote and unnatural and in the mean time wilfully overlooking and passing by that sense which is most obvious and easie to the common apprehension of any unbyass'd and impartial Reader This is to use the H. Scriptures as the Church of Rome have done many Holy and good men whom they are pleased to brand with the odious Name of Hereticks to torture them till they speak the mind of their Tormentors though never so contrary to their own I will now conclude this whole Discourse with a Saying which I heard from a great and judicious Man Non amo nimis argutam Theologiam I love no Doctrines in Divinity which stand so very much upon quirk and subtilty And I cannot upon this occasion forbear to say that those Doctrines of Religion and those Interpretations of Scripture have ever been to me the most suspected which need abundance of Wit and a great many Criticisms to make them out And considering the Wisdom and Goodness of Almighty God I cannot possibly believe but that all things necessary to be believ'd and practis'd by Christians in order to their eternal Salvation are plainly contain'd in the H. Scriptures God surely hath not dealt so hardly with Mankind as to make any thing necessary to be believ'd or practis'd by us which he hath not made sufficiently plain to the capacity of the unlearned as well as of the learned God forbid that it should be impossible for any man to be saved and to get to Heaven without a great deal of learning to direct and carry him thither when the far greatest part of Mankind have no learning at all It was well said by Erasmus That it was never well with the Christian World since it began to be a matter of so much Subtilty and Wit for a man to be a true Christian SERMON III. Concerning the Incarnation of CHRIST Preached in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry December 21. 1680. JOHN I. 14. The Word was made flesh THE last Year about this Time and upon the same Occasion of the Annual Commemoration of the Incarnation and Nativity of our B. Lord and Saviour I began to discourse to you upon these Words In which I told you were contained three great Points concerning our Saviour the Author and Founder of our Religion First His Incarnation the Word was made or became flesh Secondly His Life and conversation here amongst us and dwelt among us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he pitched his Tabernacle among us he lived here below in this World and for some time made his residence and abode with us Thirdly That in this state of his Humiliation he gave great and clear evidence of his Divinity Whilst he appear'd as a Man and lived amongst us there were great and glorious Testimonies given of Him that he was the Son of God and that in so peculiar a manner as no Creature can be said to be And we beheld his Glory the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth I began with the first of these namely his Incarnation the Word was made flesh For the full and clear explication of which words I proposed to consider these two things I. The Person here spoken of and who it is that is here said to be incarnate or made flesh namely the Word And this I have handled at large in my two former Discourses upon this Text. I shall now proceed in the II. Second place to give some account of the nature and manner of this Incarnation so far as the Scripture hath thought fit to reveal and declare this Mystery to us The Word was made flesh that is He who is personally called the Word and whom the Evangelist hath so fully and clearly described in the beginning of his Gospel he became flesh that is assumed our Nature and became man for so the word flesh is frequently used in Scripture for Man or Human Nature So that by the Word 's becoming flesh that is Man the Evangelist did not only intend to express to us that he assumed a human Body without a Soul but that he became a perfect Man consisting of Soul and Body united It is very probable indeed that the Evangelist did purposely chuse the word flesh which signifies the frail and mortal part of Humanity to denote to us the great condescension of the Son of God in assuming our Nature with all its infirmities and becoming subject to frailty and mortality for our sake Having thus explain'd the meaning of this Proposition the Word was made flesh I shall in a further prosecution of this Argument take into consideration these three things First I shall consider more distinctly what may reasonably be suppos'd to be implied in this expression of the Word 's being made flesh Secondly I shall consider the Objections which are commonly brought against this Incarnation of the Son of God from the seeming impossibility or incongruity of the thing Thirdly And because after all that can be said in answer to those Objections it may still appear to us very strange that God who could without all this circumstance and condescension even almost beneath the Majesty of the Great God at least as we are apt to think have given Laws to Mankind and have offer'd forgiveness of Sins and eternal life upon their Repentance for sins past and sincere tho imperfect obedience for the future I say it may seem strange that notwithstanding this God should yet make choice of this way and method of our Salvation I shall therefore in the last place endeavour to give some probable account of this strange and wonderful Dispensation and shew that it was done in great condescension to the weakness and common prejudices of Mankind and that when it is throughly consider'd it will appear to be much