Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A66875
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The reasonablenes of scripture-beleif a discourse giving some account of those rational grounds upon which the Bible is received as the word of God / written by Sir Charles Wolseley ...
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Wolseley, Charles, Sir, 1630?-1714.
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1672
(1672)
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Wing W3313; ESTC R235829
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198,284
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556
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order to the great end of the whole But at last the Positive and absolute Proof to one that denies it must needs depend upon somewhat Collateral to the Book it self Secondly No External proof of the Bible would be sufficient to any reasonable enquiry were there not likewise an Internal Evidence resulting from it to its Divinity that is 'T were to no purpose to urge any Arguments from External Evidences be they Miracles or what they will to prove a Book to be Divine and sent us from God did not the Book approve it self to the judgment of right Reason likely so to be 'T were a vain attempt to endeavour to make a reasonable man upon any collateral considerations submit to the Bible as a Law Divine did not the Bible upon a due Search into the matter of it appear worthy of such a Denomination I much applaud that saying of Mr. Chillingworth upon this occasion For my part sayes he I profess if the Doctrine of the Scripture did not appear as good and as sit to come from God the Fountain of goodness as the Miracles by which it was confirmed were great I should want one main Pillar of my Faith and for want of it I fear I should be much stagger'd Nay 't is that Innate and satisfactory Testimony the Scriptures give at last of themselves and their own Divinity to our Reasons that finally determins all rational assent establishes the truth of all other Testimonies and upon which our belief of them as Sacred and Divine is ultimately founded and established So that as on the one hand we ought not to insist upon any Internal Evidence as simply sufficient to Evidence the truth of the Scriptures exclusively to the External justification God has incircled them withal and upon which the full and absolute proof of divers parts must necessarily depend and also because 't is upon all the reason God has given us to believe the Bible that be requires our assent to it So on the other hand we must not deny an Internal evidence to result from the Innate worth of the Bible it self whereby it appears to our reasons at last to be what other External Arguments perswade us to believe it is When we tast the Excellency of the Doctrine and when we perceive how all the matters of Fact stand justified to us a Divinity appears in the Whole We finde this Book to be a rare Composure of Divine Wisdom are convinced upon the whole matter 't is from above and bow to the Authority of God as the formal Reason of our Obedience whom we evidently perceive speaking to us in it This being premised I proceed to consider this Book in it self in the Matter of it as it now lies before us And herein I shall endeavour these two things First To shew that this Book so far as 't is capable of being compleatly judged of by what ariseth from it self without any Collateral Supplement so far as every Man's Reason becomes a competent Judge of it in its bare proposal appears to a reasonable enquiery most likely to come from God and to be Divine And by that internal Evidence arising from its own excellent Nature reflects back also a justification to all those External Arguments brought to prove it Secondly That in all such things as relate to Matters of Fact and wherein an External Justification is necessary to ascertain us fully about it we find this Book so witnessed unto so inviron'd with a concurrence of Humane Testimonies as leaves no room for any reasonable Doubts to be made about this Matter For the first That this Book so far as we can competently judge of it from it self appears to be Divine and that there are many Internal Reasons of great force resulting from the Matter of this Book it self to perswade us that it is from God and written by his special Command will be sufficiently manifest in the consideration of these following Particulars First We find contained in this Book some things that exceed the bounds of all Natural Abilities ever to have found out Such as could not in the judgment of right Reason be the product of any Humane Invention Not only such things as no man did think of before for that every Book contains that gives birth to a New Notion but such things as no man could ever have thought of Such as could not have been known amongst Man-kind any other way than by Revelation And therefore though written by Men must needs be revealed from Above The Instances of this shall be these two First This Book tells us such things of God of his Nature of his Eternal Counsels of the manner of his Existence as were utterly beyond the confines of all Natural Discovery and could not be minted in any Humane Brain No fimie Intellect could ever have travelled into such Depths and Heights as by this Book we are acquainted with and appear to us to be in the Counsels of God in order to the glorifying of himself by the Works that he has made No man could ever have imagined a Trinity in the Deity or such an existence of one Simple Essence as this Book acquaints us withall These are such things as could never be hammer'd out in any Humane Shop Such as without Revelation could never have enter'd into any created Mind to conceive of Secondly That contrivement we find in this Book of Saving the World and rebuilding the fallen Tabernacle of Humane Nature is evidently a reproach to the best abilities of Man-kind and an undenyable instance of this kind 'T is not onely what was unthought of before but what lay infinitely distant and wide from what could be thought either by Angels or Men and directly fathers it self upon that Supream Wisdom that is Above And that first in respect of the thing in it self considered And secondly In respect of the Manner and Method of its Accomplishment First In respect of the Thing it self and that on two accounts The height of stupendiousness that is in it and the transcendent degree of excellency that is in it First The Stupendiousness of it What a hidden and amazing Mystery how far removed from any mortal view or imagination was this That the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity should descend from Heaven and assume Humane Nature into a conjunction with the Divine and in that conjunction become the Saviour of the World That He should take upon Himself in His own Person the Sin and Guilt of Man-kind Die for the World Make thereby a Satisfaction proportionate to Infinite Justice and prepare a way for God to express himself in the utmost act of Mercy in a conjunction with the highest exercise of Justice No less than an Infinite Understanding could have shaped such a Design or been the Author of such a Projection Nor could any but God himself with whom all things are possible that are in themselves possible have found out an expedient to have reconciled those two Infinite Attributes in
considered in order to the satisfaction of such an enquiry First the Internal Cause of it And secondly the External Means by which it hath been brought about The Internal Cause of it hath layn in two things First An Insussiciency in our Natural Abilities since the Fall to ascertain us fully about Divine things and to give a satisfying answer to all those enquiries we naturally make about them Secondly the general ill improvement the world has made of those abilites it had and the universal Declension and Apostacy of mankind from that knowledg they might have arrived at For the first Though the Being of God and the existence of a Supreme Power be witnessed to by every mans Reason and every man be born with a relation to somewhat Above him and there be many Maximes of Natural Divinty connate to the true exercise of our rational faculties yet there be two things can never be attained by any Natural search First A certain knowledg What God is And Secondly a certain knowledg How he is to be Served Neither a Satisfying account of the Nature of his Being nor of a Worship acceptable to him is to be compassed without Revelation About these two things when men have had nothing told them from Heaven to fix them their Opinions have been as various as their Inventions The grosser part of the world God being onely an Intellectual Object whom they could not see generally fell to conceive of him by what they did see Cicero himself confessing that when we come to consider Qualis sit Deorum Natura Nihil est dificilius quam a consuctudine oculorum aciem mentis abducere Lib. 2. de Nat. Dear And the more Refined part lost themselves in a Wilderness of Abstracted Speculations about what they could never distinctly comprehend For the Second 'T is plain a great part of the Heathen Idolatry arose not only from their Mistakes in what they could not know but from a corrupt defection from what they might know Those Notices their own natural abilities gave them of God thwarting their Sensual Inclinations they delighted not to retain such a knowledg of God in their minds but willingly turned aside to Delusion left the guide of their Reason and chose the conduct of Appetite The Stupendious folly of their Religions is as a Thousand witnesses to this Truth That they lived not only below the true Knowledg of the one God but farr beneath the exercise of Right Reason For though I am apt to believe that a Supernatural knowledg does much instruct us in the true extent of what is meerly Natural and does much inkindle our natural Light and we see many things now to be attainable by Nature which the world so farr as I can discerne never found out without Revelation Yet 't is not credible that a Rational Being without some way extinguishing the dictates of his own faculty should make a God of that which he himself knew to be but a Perishing Creature or should think to please a being of such perfections as every mans Reason must needs ascribe to God by debasing himself before the Meanest parts of the World Secondly If we consider the External means by which these Internal Causes have operated and how all that Rubbish of Pagan Theology hath been visibly induced to defile and cumber the world from five things chiefly we may derive it First From a corrupt Tradition of the Worlds first original and the History of the Creation and the Flood and many passages both before and after the Flood which Noah and his family first conveyed down to the world in its Repeopling and the Jews from Moses afterward inform'd them off This appears to have been a great rise to many of the Heathen Superstions and Vanities and most especially amongst the Phaenicians much of whose Religion seems to be a plain corruption of those original Truths and an apparent Mythology upon the True History of things before and after the Flood as appears by Diodorus Sicubus and more anciently by their own famous Antiquary Sanconiathon in the Version of Philo Biblius The occasion of which corruption in the Tradition of those things was probably the Confusion of Tongues at first the great increase of Barbarisme after the proud desire every Nation had to apply all Traditional Stories of famous persons to some of themselves with many other Reasons which Scaliger Bochart and other Learned men give for it Secondly From the Fictions of the Poets who 't is clear were the first beginners of all the Graecian Learning and were therefore anciently called in Graece 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Teachers and as Strabo says and I thinks upon very good grounds were also the first beginners of all the ancientest Learning every where All other Speech whether Historical or Rhetorical being but the progeny of Poetry the Ancients knowing no other artificial or set form of speech but what was in Verse and therefore as the same Author saies Poetry was anciently called Prima quaedam Philosophia These fill'd the World with innumerable Fables Mythologized upon every thing and did greatly promote their Theological Vanities and the Corruption of all true Story Thirdly From the wild Speculations and multiplied Theories of the Philosophers of whom there were some hundreds of Sects which served greatly to Puzzle and Mis-lead men There being as Cicero saies no Absurdity but had some Philosopher for its Patron Fourthly From their Oracles by which the world lay subjected to all Diabolical delusions And fifthly from their corrupt Legislators such as Numa in Rome and others who finding the World Sequacious in point of Religion and Mankind apt to adore every fiction imposed upon their belief whatever they thought most conducing to their own Politick Ends. Nor has the World without Revelation been free from defects in its Morals though Men attained far therein and their Morality much outwent their Divinity Cicero wrought with much better success de Officiis then he he did de Nat. Deorum yet the Bible has greatly improved the world herein Let any man extract the most exact Scheme he can of Morality out of the best Philosophers and the acutest Moralists and compare it with the Doctrine the Bible proposeth to us about those things and the defects of it will be visible Amiraldus observes in his Treatise of Religions That scarce can there be found any Common-Wealth amongst those which have been esteemed the best policyed in which some Grand and Signal Vice has not been excused or permitted or even sometimes recommended by publick Laws Plato makes a Community of Women one of the fundamental Constitutions of his Republick Socrates and Cato I think are agreed to be two as famous Moralists as ever were in Graece or in Rome Cato the great exemplar for Virtue and Justice amongst the Romans and Socrates the Phoenix of Graece for Virtue and Piety of whom Xenophon gives this admirable account in his Book De Socratis memorabilibus dictis Nemo autem unquam Socratem