Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	due_a	father_n	great_a	92	3	2.0703	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77522	Letters between the Ld George Digby, and Sr Kenelm Digby kt. concerning religion.	Bristol, George Digby, Earl of, 1612-1677.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.	1651 (1651)	Wing B4768; Thomason E1355_2; ESTC R209464	61,686	137

and consequently the insufficiency of your rule of faith tradition hath been made appeare it will be fit to vindicate the sufficiency of that rule which we relie upon In which work the first hinderance that I meet with is this objection of yours That the particular books of Scripture were written for other particular ends and not to give us a compleat body of faith To which I answer that if by particular books of Scripture you understand each book a part severed from its relation to the whole I then agree with you that every particular book was no more intended for a compleat body of Faith then every particular Chapter for a compleat body of the book or then a Window or a Door to be a compleat body of a House but as the one was designed to give entrance the other light to some room or passage of the Edisice so the several books of Scripture were written some to give entrance to Christianity some to illustrate dark places of the whole some to inform us of matters of fact that we might understand in what chiefly to praise God some to discipline us in matters of practice that we might know how aptliest to serve and please him And others to instruct us in matter of belief that we might learn to relie upon him But on the other side if you remit the least of this abstract and Independent consideration of the particular books of Scripture I must then profess that I stedfastly beleeve that they were all designed to this chief and primary end of composing that compleat body of Faith whereon Christs perfect Church should be built as certainly as so many several parts of a building having each a particular end besides of their erection are yet in the general and main intention all destin'd to the making up of one compleat and intire Fabrick yea further without urging the comparison till it halt I am perswaded that as the Master Architect having an Idaea form'd of the whole directs many a part to the perfection of that when the subordinate workman that frames it thinks of nothing farther then of the peice he is in hand with So oftentimes the Almighty Architect when his Ministers perhaps never look'd further then that service in particular wherein they were imployed some perhaps in a Gospel in an Epistle some he by his infinite Wisdom directed each particular to the making up of the whole and compleat body and rule of Faith the written Word which by his admirable providence he hath and will I am consident ever preserve intire and uncorrupt in all parts necessary to its own perfection and harmony and to mans eternal safety and direction Insomuch that I cannot but think it at the best loss of time to be solicitous after any other rule and irreverence if not impiety to question the sufficiency of this But because my opinion is little considerable with one of so far a better Judgment take in this Point the Opinion of the Fathers which you so much relie upon To begin with Tertullian these are the last words of his 22. Chapter against Hermogines Scriptum esse doceat Hermogenis officina If it be not written saith he let him fear the Woe destin'd to such as shall adde or take away Can any thing be inferred more rightly then from this passage the sufficiency of Scripture and the superfluity of any other rule But take yet somewhat more direct from † Oratio ad Gentiles towards the beginning Athanasius The holy and from God inspired Scriptures saith he are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of themselves sufficient to the discovery of truth I appeal to St Basil himself of all the Fathers the greatest attributer to Tradition in all things wherein regard is justly due unto it Hear what he sayes handling a point wherein Scripture I think is as dark as in any necessary one whatsoever I mean that of the Trinity Believe what 's written saith * Hom. 29. advers Calum stan Trin. page 623. he what is not written seek not And in another place It is a manifest falling from the Faith sayes † De vera ac Pia side page 251. he and an argument of Arrogance either to reject any of those things that are written or to introduce any that are not of the written And lastly to sum up all that can be said by a Protestant in one sentence of a Father of greatest Learning and authority Listen but to St. Augustine De doctrina Christian lib. 2. cap. 9. In its quae appertè in Scriptura positasunt inveniuntur illa omnia quae continent fidem moresque vivendi He had need be a confident Sophister that would undertake to evade these Authorities but yet if they may not be admitted let Scripture be heard for it self It is a priviledge and preeminence solely peculiar to that sacred Volume to be Witness Advocate and Judge in its own cause Surely the Spirit spake in St. Paul when he told Timothy That holy Writ was able to make him wise unto salvation 2 Tim. 3. in fine And when numbring up almost all the particular parts that can be required to the compleat Institution of a Christian he concludes that in these by Scripture the man of God is made perfect and fitted to every good work And I am confident by the same Spirit he spake his own minde when he spake ours so directly to the Corinthians Vt dicsatis in nobis supra id quod scriptum est non sapere Epist 1. cap. 4. Where by the way it is to be noted that the Apostle applies this doctrine as an Antidote to that very inconvenience which I have heard some Papists object against the reliance on the search and use of Scripture namely that by it those of greater capacity were lkely to be blown up and to glory in their clearer discerning over weaker whereas the guidance of the Church and Tradition was equaller to all To this I say 't is worth observing what he delivers as it were by way of reason for the contrary Doctrine to wit of confining our selves to Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I profess Consin that these and many other passages of Scripture which for brevities sake I note only in the * Deut. cap. 4. cap. 12. Epist ad Gal. cap. 1. Margent prenounce to me in as clear a sense as may be the sufficiencie of Scripture and supersluity of relying on tradition for a rule of faith And yet I sweare I am none of those of whom St. Basil speaks p. 621. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How they may sound or what other sense they may bear to you I know not since now adayes Gods Word proves to men of divers opinions as the Apostles language when the devided tongues had sat upon them in Dr. * This was likewise the fantastique opinion of the Authour of the book de Spiritu sancto fathered upon Cyprian Alabasters conceit to severall Nations at one and the same

the Church universal Such were their Symboles such Irenaeus his unity of Faith in lib. 1. cap. 2. such Origens introduction to his book de principiis such Tertullians rule of Faith in his prescription against Hereticks such Epiphanius his conclusion of his work which he calls the settlement of truth assurance of immortality such likewise to fit you with some of all ages was that work of Gennadius written within these two hundred years De rectâ Christianorum Fide I will not say in some of which but in all which together there is not one Article of Faith received by the Church of Rome and rejected by us so much as mentioned save only in Epiphanius of Christs discent into Hel a Point variously and uncertainly understood among the Fathers as shall in another place be demonstrated Now for farther proof of the little agitation or great neglect of our controverted points in the Primitive times although it will follow of consequence to what hath been allready alledged yet I beseech you let me appeal to your own observation Do you know of any of the Fathers for the first four hundred years that hath purposely and of designe composed the least Treatise of any one of our questions or in some other tract handled them so much as in a formal digestion Inform me I beseech you for I profess all the works that ever I have met with of them appear to have been wholy directed either to deride the Pagans to confute Philosophers to convince the Jewes to confound prodigious Heresies or deliver precepts of good life or else to expound some passages of Scripture most useful to the same ends These appear to me to have been the sole objects both of their wills and abilities to combate And shall we venture to give sentence in our intricate disputes upon words or passages that by the by may seem to concern them either casually let fall or directed to other purposes in most of which in my conscience we finde our own opinions as rationally as Whittington his turn Lord Major of London in the ring of bells or some melancholy Lover his Mistrisses picture in the graine of Wainscote and their intentions as rightly as Eudocia Homers and another Virgils when they made him Evangelize so little do I regard what they say in this our case but to their silence I attribute much and think it strongly expressive but nothing to the advantage of those that impose for necessary Articles of Faith Doctrines that those renowned Oracles of the Church either never heard of or thought not worth their mentioning Thus noble Cousin I have laid before you the principal reasons that led me to deny the Fathers Testimonies to have such a validity whereon we may justly pass a verdict in our questions of Religion which I beseech you not to take as meant in a way of further derogation from them then in those very particulars for there is no man living that in the general payes them more reverence then my self in the highest admiration of their erudition and piety And therefore where I have mark'd out their heates against one another and contradictions let them be understood to have sprung from holy fervor and zeal in whatsoever they were for the time perswaded was good and true when I note their variance from themselves let it recommend their ingenuity that would so clearly avow their own fallibility when I tax them for dissenting from us all in this age although S. Austin when the Donatists press him with antiquity sticks not to say that the younger Doctors are sharper sighted yet let not my words be driven farther then this modest since you so call it flattery to our selves not of seeing clearer or sharper then they but onely by their helps further as dwarfs upon Gyants shoulders And lastly when I deny them the ability to determine our points of controversies let it be of no more derogation from their learning and judgement then it were of lessening to an Ambassador or of flattery to his followers to say that at a publike audience some of them could give a good account of the things in the lower end of the room when he himself could say little or nothing of them having onely past them by with his attentions intirely fixt upon the higher and more noble objects These were the Considerations that possest me when I wrote my former Letter although I had then the leisure but to point at a few of them and since I cannot speak to you but with truth and freedom I must here profess they remain in full force with me still your Letter having given me great contentment but little satisfaction for I can by no means yeeld that there is any Assurance much less infallibility in the Rule which you at the first prescribed and still insist on of judging our Controversies by the Fathers namely to use our liberty of reason only in what they teach of themselves with confirmations out of Scripture or probable Arguments but to resign it up in an entire and implicite Assent to what they tell us they were taught and deliver to us as delivered to them for the received sense of the Church which is to be understood you say not only when they use these formall positive Words That the Church hath received from the Apostles and holdeth generally such and such a Doctrine but at other times also when they do but intimate it in their Discourses where by the way I must needs tell you I ever thought intimations likelyer to beget Disputes then to end them If in this positive Rule you reserve a Liberty to except some particulars so delivered or some Catholick Fathers so delivering them Then without more adoe it is evident that this Way nothing can be decided for your Adversaries will claim in what thwarts them the like liberty of excepting If you lay the Rule absolutely generall to wit that what Article soever is delivered directly or by imtimation from the Fathers to have been a received Doctrine of the Church ought to be swallowed for an infallible verity it will easily be made appear that this method must betray you not only into some Protestant Tenents but also into Beliefs on both sides confessed to be erroneous It must draw you to be a Millenary it must draw you to hold a necessity of Childrens partaking the Eucharist it must draw you to abhorr that use of Images as Idolatrous and finally it must force you to reject out of the Canon those Books which we esteem Apochryphall for all these doe the Fathers deliver with somewhat more then intimations that they were taught to them as derived from the Apostles and from generall receptions of the Catholique Church First for the doctrine of the Millenaries I conceive you make a right judgement of the originall thereof from Papias whom St. Jerome the best Critick in Ecclesiasticall Antiquity sayes to have been the first Authour of it which error it is probable the

Convenient as it had need since under a less pretension then Necessarie it is hard imposing new duties upon the multitude And the step being so easie though so great from necessarie to absolutely necessary 't is no marvaile that all or most of the Pastors should have delivered it for such to their Flockes and applied to it the seale of most Authority with the multitudes Tradition and so they have swallowed that according to the expression for a necessary duty and given it the generall voague of such in the Church which was farre from being truly so in its first and after so long a progresse untraceable originals So likewise of Christs descent into Hell concerning which I suppose all antiquity agrees in the shell of the Article Descendit ad Inferos though Ruffinus in Symb. says it was left out of the Symbole of the Church of Rome few of the Fathers in the kernell or inward sense that is what was understood by Inferi and how and why Christ descended thither Some taking the Inferi to be a part of Hel others understanding it with a little more colour of reason that resting place called Abrahams Bosome and a part of Heaven Some thinking and rightly as I conceive that he descended virtually onely to triumph over the damned Others that locally yea so farre as to preach in hell and convert there such was the extravagant opinion of Clemens of Alexandria Strom. lib. 6. p 639. one of the learnedest of the pack but all agreeing I say in this outside Descendit ad Inferos or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No marvell that the more grosse and literall sense should be swallowed by the multitude and gain the name though an errour of common reception handed to them from their Forefathers so that it may be collected out of what hath been said that falshoods may creep into the Church either by want of exact fidelity in the Teachers which want may be generall when the collaterall considerations are generall and the poynts themselves not thought so important as others they serve to Or by the frequent misapprehension of the teached the matter often taking possession of them when the manner of the doctrine usually most considerable is either let slip or supplanted or else by leisurable yea and at first insensible mistakes either in Teachers or Learners which notwithstanding in long progress of time grow manifest and vast like the ebbings and flowings of the Sea which at the end of some houres make so great a difference when at the brink no man can perceive how much ground each wave doth gain or lose What then shall those discern that look upon the severall billows at a remote and dazzeling distance Nor can your arguments taken from humane Natures prime appetence of Truth serve to conclude an infallibility in whatsoever shal be imbrac'd for a truth by a vast multitude of men of variety of natures dispositions and interests First because no number whatsoever of Individuals but that which makes up the universall can be considered as other then a part wheras your argument is not colourably applied to lesse then the whole It is the infrustrable appetence of truth an appropriate of humane nature in the generall that you insist upon which is not made vain by any multitudes which how great soever is still but a part entertaining of a falshood Secondly because if we admit of your Argument it will conclude for Heretickes once grown numerous as the Arrians were as well as for the best Catholickes since naturall Appetences are not to be suppos'd more frustrate in the one then in the other * Lactantius Divin Inst lib. 5. cap. 13. An boni nostri qualitas ex populi potius pendebit erroribus quam ex conscientia nostra judicio Dei. Thirdly because though I grant your Argument I am never a whit the surer of truth where I finde many professors of a doctrine held as by tradition since the prime naturall appetence of truth whence you draw your ratiocination is to the knowledge of truth not the teaching of it Now in our question this is as much or more requisite in the deliverers then the other in the receivers since they look no further then the hands they had it from and to hold fast in truth what they presented them for such and for so conveyed by their preceders to them And lastly your argumentation cannot be usefull because you extend it only to prove that multitudes cannot agree together on an untruth to complot it whereas to overthrow your imagined infallibility it is enough that they agree in or to an untruth to believe it Between which two there is so great a difference that I think the first very improbable the other very frequent Nay farther I do conceive the very frequencie and if I may so say aptness in Individuals whether few or many which makes a multitude to be led into errors to result from mans natural affection to truth which is such and so transporting that we are glad to embrace and hug the very shadowes of it And being rarely able in our imperfect and deprest condition here to arive to a solid enjoyment of that prime essence of Intellectual delight we grow fond of the appearances and cleave close to what is like it Mans affection to this transcendent expressing it self after the same manner that it usually doth to the other prime fellow appetence of our Nature good which our soul here below interially and naturally aims at in all its pursuances But the onely true good being too farr elevated for it to ascend to a full enjoyment thereof whilst it beares the clogg of flesh upon it our ardor directs it self to what we think of nearest derivation from it But alas we misse even of that and embrace false shadowes for it easily conceiting any thing the same that 's but clad like unto what we love whilst almost all mankind courts pursues and enjoyes what 's ill yet seldome or never but sub ratione boni And thus by easily believing what we fain would have by a naturall passion both to good and truth we are betraid to a mistaking credulity in both Thus Cousin I have presumed to give you an Answer in my immethodical and unpollisht way to what I finde repugnant to my understanding in the discourse to which you refer'd me for proofe of infallibilitie in all the Traditions of the Church of Rome To discusse that learned and eloquent Discourse throughout in any correspondency to its weight and beauty belongs I consesse to farre greater eminence then I have vanity to aim at And therefore what I have ventured upon hath been onely to shew you that although I am in the highest measure delighted yea even ravished with that excellent piece I am nothing a paid therewith in this particular which may serve for an argument that goodnesse many times delights the soul in spite of truth and so proves a transcendent above it Now that the fallibility