Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A49848
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A sermon preached at the anniversary meeting of the Eaton-scholars at St. Mary le Bow, on Nov. 22d, 1683 by Joseph Layton.
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Layton, Joseph.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing L760; ESTC R25797
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12,974
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34
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and Eminent Persons is a bold curiosity to enquire but all the ordinary Confidences which the Spirit of God creates in the Elect are built upon Duty and conditional Agreements Hereby we know we are Translated from Death to Life if we love the Brethren 1 John 3.14 And many the like Scriptures are but Rational Inferences from supposed Premisses And when departing Saints cast the last Eye upon themselves their securest Anchor next to the All-sufficient Merits of Christ is I say ordinarily but the Conclusion of a Syllogism whereof God makes the Major And every Man by the Assistance of his Reason and Examination of his Conscience is to add the Minor Such a joyful Prospect I presume shall ye one day have when after the Toil and Troubles of a busie Life ye shall seek Privacy and be glad to retire into the Simplicity of the years ye this day Commemorate For I reckon we must once more go to School to Con over this dull Lesson of the World again where Experience will be your Master and Repentance your Discipline It shall be a joy then I say upon rational grounds to conclude I have run my Race I have finished my Course henceforth a Crown of Life is laid up for me Lastly and not the least this Education this Ability this Knowledge is best to teach us our own Ignorance and consequently Humility Meekness and Condescention to others He that knows the intricacies of Things the variety of Apprehensions the different sizes of Understandings The Power of Prejudice and Passion must needs have compassionate thoughts for the generality of Men and can with equal affection maintain Reason and pity Ignorance In Sum Among all your Gifts and Graces there is none so Amiable so Honourable so becoming a Schollar as Humility and Modesty and Mercy Insomuch that though you could speak With all Tongues and work Miracles yet without this Charity they were nothing worth So that if we bethink our selves well we shall find this one of the most Reasonable Services of all These are some few of the many advantages of your Education as it qualifies to serve God Reasonably and with Understanding than which next to his Sanctifying Grace he has not bestowed a nobler Talent upon the Sons of Men and which therefore deserves our most serious Consideration and our most sincere acknowledgments To illustrate this a little more and settle it upon your affections it will not be amiss briefly from these Regions of Light to look down and behold the Children of Darkness grovling and wandering in the Mazes of Error whom I reduced to three ranks in our Second Part 1. Such as make no use Formal Customary Christians 2. Such as Enslave it by an implicit Faith 3. Such as renounce and despise it under Pretence of the Spirit 1. Formal The bred and born Christian he that sucks in his Religion with his Country Air and holds his Creed by the courtesie of England that distinguishes Christianity from Mahometanism by Crosses and Half-Moons and the Reformation from Popery by Beads and Bibles In short He that is a Proselyte to Custom and the Laws a Disciple of Leviathan rather than Christ And it is a sad truth How few are able to render a reason of their Faith and yet what a noise and a bustle do they make for the Cause and the True Protestant Religion to whose Support they Contribute no more than the Antick Faces do to the strengthning of a Church 'T is true 't is a mercy to be born within the Pale of the Church to open our Eyes in the Light of the Gospel and so 't is to be born in a Temperate Clime I make no doubt but God accepts the sincerity of the Plough-man as well as the reason of the Philosopher That he will favour his own Gift and receive those to Glory whom he has predestin'd to Grace Altho then These little Ones have their Angels and a Title to the Kingdom of Heaven yet in this blind Felicity they are apt to stumble and when Persecution comes to draw back It is little more then the Homage which Birds and Beasts pay It is seeing by the benefit of Clay and Spittle a Sacrifice without Salt Whereas the Excellency of Religion consists in a free and rational complyance with God's Commands to understand the Excellency of them and this is it that fixed David's heart that preserved Lot amidst a crooked and perverse Generation And made St. Paul so confident That nothing of any Nature should be able to separate them from the Love of Jesus 2. From hence turn your Eye to the Men of implicit Faith and you shall see them creeping before Images adoring of Wafers paying Pensions for Purgatory and Traffiquing for the price of Sins In the midst of all this Pageantry and this Nonsense Their comfort is they believe as the Church believes But God calls upon us to employ our Talent to Exercise our selves in these things to Build up our selves in our most holy Faith and to Stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made us Free There can be no Articles de Novo impos'd upon the Church because the Church signifies a Number of Men already agreed upon common Terms And to impose New is to alter the Primitive Constitution of the Church But this device serves the ends of both Parties And the Juggle is That what the People part with of their Understanding and the Use of their Reason is made up to them in Allowances and Indulgences for sin in easie Absolutions and cheap Penances 'T is a powerful Temptation to be freed from the trouble of Searching Discussing Examining and it is a strong support of the Papal Tyranny But where has God allowed this shifting and shuffling of Duties from one to another How is it possible for one Man to understand and believe for another But God accepts not the Sacrifice of Fools nor can any Man Redeem his Brothers Life And at the last day whatever aggravations there may be for our Pride and our Sloth in this Case yet there will be no Commutations of Punishments no engagements for one anothers Souls will there be accepted But every Man shall suffer in his own person according as He has done in the Body Lastly Behold the Enthufiast that is above Reason and the Carnality of Discourse and you shall find him to be given over to folly and madness to giddy Doctrines and destructive dangerous Impulses If he commits a murther 't is with the Sword of the Spirit and if he throws down Churches 't is with the Breath of the Spirit In the Transactions with Mankind God declared not only his Attributes but his Nature subsisting in a Trinity of Persons and as such he will be worshipped But is it reasonable that the manifestation of the Spirit should swallow up the work of the Creation and by being Christians we should cease to be Men. If the Scriptures which were given by Inspiration of the Holy Ghost be not
of serving God reasonably and acceptably 2. To excite your Gratitude the more I shall compare your Condition with that of most others whom we may rank under Three Heads 1. The Formal bred and born Christian that makes no use of his Reason 2. The Papist That enslaves it trusting to his implicit Faith 3. The Enthusiast That despises and renounces it 3. Shew that this particular Meeting is a Reasonable Service and that we are to thank him because he has enabled us to be thankful That is to say 1. A Learned Education by refining a Mans Parts elevating his Mind ennobling his Faculties and filling them with rich and worthy Ideas does thereby enable him to have Just and Honourable apprehension of God And this is the first and most important Principle of Religion for such as we suppose God to be such a course shall we take to please him Some have fancied God to be an unactive Being in the World enjoying himself in an Eternal Rest and Retiredness accordingly they abandon themselves to Luxury and Sensuality for how should they dread that Providence that cares for nothing Or that Omnipotence that does Nothing Others confine him to too narrow a Sphear providing but for a little Flock and a small Remnant wronging all his other Attributes to exalt his Sovereignty And they seek private and unaccountable ways to assure themselves of an ungrounded unaccountable favour The Papists that they might give their People a Notion of God dress him up in the similitude of a Man and though they pretend not to paint Essences yet they expose him to every vulgar Eye and every vulgar Conception in such resemblances which he was only pleased for secret Reasons and in Mystical ways to Communicate to his chosen Prophets And they Transcribe Ovid and Propertius to find a style for the loves of Angels and Glorified Spirits above And not a few fancying God to be adorned as they best like seek after a strange and personal Union with him And in this Scene of their Imaginations they pursue him with Effeminate Passions with Longings and Languishments with Extravagant Joys and sudden Despairs as their sick and distemper'd Fancies lead them These are Gross and Carnal Conceptions changing the Glory of the Incorruptible God into the Similitude of a Corruptible Creature Rom. 1.3 But to make him vindicative and Sanguinary and with a Turkish Tyranny to fling away Souls into Eternal Perdition is next to Blasphemy But your Predecessor Abraham 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being a Man addicted to Study and Contemplation when he consider'd the Creation God's Work and consulted with his Reason which is a Beam of God himself He found That to be God is to be most Holy Wise Just Good Merciful In short That which we can conceive to be most Perfect that and infinitely more so is God He Judged of him by reasonable Collections not fanciful Ideas And such an advantage have ye Brethren who having your minds purged from all drossy and low thoughts are enabled by the benefit of your Education to attain to this first and fundamental Principle of Eternal Life Namely To know Thee the Only True God and so to offer him a Worthy Reasonable Service 2. Hereby we come to know the true Nature Excellency and Perfection of Religion For since God is such such also must be the way to Honour and Worship him And if in any of his Commands there be any doubtful Expressions and variety of Interpretations that is to be esteemed most agreeable to God's Will which is most consonant to Reason God Governs us as he has made us so that being neither Engins nor Angels we act not by Instinct nor Intuition but by discourse and rational Progressions If you consider the Articles the Mysteries of our most Holy Faith none but a considering Man will be induc'd to receive them And for the practical Points of our Obedience none but a Brute will reject them There must be wise Consideration and serious Pondering The Beraean Generosity and a full Conviction of the Understanding to make a Man a Christian for Faith is not the Milk of the Nurse nor the Credulity of the Simple nor a point of Honour among Sword-men nor the Sence of the House among Politicians nor a blind Subjection to the Infallible Chair But it is the deliberate Choice of a Prudent Rational Man that without contending for rigorous Demonstrations and Scientifical Surefootings is content to submit to every degree of Truth and entertain every Beam of Light is ready to comply when the motives to belief preponderate tho the things themselves be incomprehensible But Oh the loss the misery of those whose Talent it is to hold the Plough How should they comprehend with all illuminated Saints Eph. 3.18 What is the Breadth and Length and Heigth and Depth and observe the Lines of the Great Mystery of Godliness from so many Points of so vast a Circumference beautifully centring in the Messias How should they with the Wisemen follow his Star or trace the Great Birth the Promised Seed from its first quick'ning in Eve through the long-liv'd Patriarchs through the Sacrifices and Ceremonies of the Law through all the Prophets down to the Midwifry of the Baptist when in the fulness of time it ripned into the Stature of a Man in Christ Jesus What a Glorious Knowledge is this to discourse out of the Scriptures and from them to be able to give a reason of our Faith To Summon in the Antiquities of Nations the Histories of Times the Rites and Religious Solemnities of Priests the Fables of Poets the Results of Philosophers In short to press the whole Creation to make bare every Shoulder for this Service of attesting to the Truth of our Religion and Illustrating the Glory of Jesus These things Brethren ye are called to know that is ye have been put into the way to know them your Fleece like Gideon's has been moist'ned with this Heavenly Dew when so many others has been left dry So that having your hearts filled with these Sacred Truths and your whole Man Transported with Raptures of Love Joy and Admiration ye will find fresh cause to bless God for the benefit of being able to offer him this Reasonable Service 3. It is a great help towards discerning the Spirits that so we may better hold fast the Truth It is a difficult matter among the many Cries Lo here is Christ and there is Christ to distinguish the Voice of God so that 't is necessary to our other Graces to add Knowledge and to have our Sences exercised in Spiritual Matters Is it likely and reasonable that God should entrust one Man with a Spirit of Infallibility for the benefit of his Church and yet no where declare so much Or that it should never be put in Practice or that so Divine a gift should be lodged in a vicious Man and God should liken his Vicegerent to the fallen Angels who with Perfection of Knowledge abound in