Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	faith_n	scripture_n	tradition_n	2,203	5	9.2236	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

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

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

as Fundamentals And he that doth otherwise lets himself loose by his own fault and if thereby he necessarily falls into Heresie it is a fatal mischief consequential to his inconsiderate negligence What man is he then that feareth the Lord him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose This then sufficiently proves the Negative that no Heresies can be incurred without foregoing faults but we are here further to enquire what positive influence there is in Sins to determine the Sinner to a consequential Heresie For though it is plain that every Heretick is a Sinner yet not that every no nor the foulest Sinners are always Hereticks So that upon the supposition of Evil it yet appears not that there is a natural necessity thence consequent that there must be Heresies To the elucidation whereof it is to be observed That though every Sinner is not a professed Heretick yet in every Apostate Conscience there are Seeds of Heresie that suggest thereunto false and imposturous Consolations Thus the Voluptuous heretically thinks his Pleasures innocent and the boons of Nature The Covetous in like manner thinks his Disease prudence frugality and piety to his Off-spring The Proud and Ambitious fancies his Airs to be magnanimous The Severe conceits his Cruelty to be Justice The Hypocrite believes that God is contented with the outside or searcheth not the heart The Violent thinks there is no Providence or Judgment to come And the most Orthodox Sinners have too easie thoughts of the Divine Lenity as if it could or would connive at mens Iniquities Thus Error is fatally interwoven with our Vices and the Oyl that feeds the Lamp of God enkindled in our Souls is precipitated by the violence of our Lusts and being thus extinguished leaves us in night and folly and the shadow of death in which we must needs plainly follow every Ignis fatuus every twinkling Fancy or Delusion that occurs in all our aims and appetites of Good and Evil. So that when so much matter for Heresie is preparatively collected in a vicious Soul it is naturally necessary and consequent that it break out into an actual flame when our Vices are grown up into Obstinacy and Ostentation and are solicited to Ambition by incidental and suitable Motives and Temptations For we must observe That the natural necessity of actual and avowed Heresies results not purely from a meer internal Vice but also from the apposite concurrence of external Allurements upon which if the vicious Soul be absolutely intent and a profession of Heresie be the only way in prospect to attain them there 't is naturally necessary that the uncorrected Appetite fall into Heresie Thus Thebutes at Jerusalem Novatian at Rome and Arius at Alexandria as Epiphanius reports him and many others elsewhere through the eager desire of an Episcopal Character denied them by the Church fell into revengeful Passions also and thence into Heresie by a natural consequence Thus Liberius Bishop of Rome after he had witnessed a good Confession and for that went into Exile yet impatience of the pressure and an appetite to the Glory of the Roman Chair being too predominant hurried him into Arianism and a subscription to the Arimin Confession Now here was no primary Necessity that these Men should be ambitious and from thence heretical but being under the impotency of Ambition against which they had not duly watched and a profession of Heresie being a ready way to attain it they were naturally driven by the blasts thereof into Acts heretical by a secondary and consequential Necessity For when Men are once subdued to their Lusts they are passively hurried away to all the precipices of Evil to which the stings of Passion or Appetite shall at ranndom drive them And as this gives a clear account of that natural Necessity by which the Vices of particular Men dispose them to Heresie so if we take a prospect of the general diffusion and prevalency of Vice in the Affections of Men in order to their secular Interests or Pleasures by the love of which the Powers of Darkness support their tyranny over the Souls of Men to destroy all which Christianity was instituted from above the general reasons of things will conclude it necessary that the Faith in Christ Jesus must ever find many prejudiced Adversaries animated by Satanical Artifices and Sollicitations to oppose and deseat it to compass which no way is so effectual as to debauch its Purity by perverse interpretations and to render its Truth dubious by litigious divisions And Man being extremely prone to these ever since the dispersion of Babel it is natural to presage that through so great enmity as Christianity must needs meet with by natural consequence Heresies and Divisions must be framed against it According to which Phaenomenon upon the general prospect and tendency of things and the various fermentation of Passions upon the introduction and process of Christianity our Saviour foretold that of necessity consequential to the Prejudices and Lusts of Men there must be Offences and that the event tho not the intent of his coming rebus sic stantibus would certainly determine in inevitable variances between the nearest Relations and blow up an unquenchable flame in the very bowels and vitals of both Kingdoms and Families But beside this natural Necessity of Heresies consequential to the sinful state of Man I told you that the words of the Apostle seem to import a moral Necessity for the propagation of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. There ought to be there is need there should be Heresies A Proposition of a strange complexion at the first glance and at which the weak and prejudicate may be easily offended For there have been Opinionists that have thought it unbecoming the Divinity to permit a meer possibility of moral Evil in the World which it had been congruous to the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness to have made a System of immaculate and unchangeable Holiness to the Lord not considering that such a model would preclude the Sovereign Regalia of God's Government and put his Creatures out of a condition of Religious Obedience in that whatsoever Acts and Operations of the Creatures are not voluntary but the passive productions of an Almighty Influence are not reducible to the formal Reason and Schesis of a Legislative Empire and Government But our question here is of a greater difficulty For though a possibility of Evil be fundamentally supposed in the institution of Laws yet what moral Necessity is there of it in any healthy or just State of Government especially in the State of Religion Is it not enough under so pure a Theocracy to admit a possibility of Offences as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Need nots and vain Excrescencies of Man's Life but must they be annumerated to the Necessaries and adapted among the mighty Importances of God's Providence in the Conduct of Religion This is that that puzzles this drives us to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉