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	true_a	word_n	9,762	5	4.5939	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39270	The vanity of scoffing, or, A letter to a witty gentleman evidently shewing the great weakness and unreasonableness of scoffing at the Christian's faith, on account of its supposed uncertainty : together with the madness of the scoffer's unchristian choice.	Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.	1674 (1674)	Wing E575; ESTC R3033	22,122	41

men to whom the name of Saints is due and under a pretence of zeal and conscience have made bold to murder Kings and fire Kingdoms And possibly I shall not much mistake if I say that the world is beholden to the notorious hypocrisie of these zelots for very much of that Atheism under which it now groans Men apt to consider so little as you are and not able or else unwilling to see their own faces in these men hid under masks on which something is drawn resembling ours are ready enough to conclude that we shall not dare to disown them aud that all who have a real zeal for the Christian Faith are either as blind or hypocritical as they But good Sir I beseech you know that we are bold enough to pronounce both them and you to be dangerous enemies no less to State than Church as their zeal is only a disguise and trick to pass on undiscovered to their designed villanies so your open defiance to all religion and profession to seek your own pleasure in all things makes us more than suspect that your interest or lust shall at any time take place with you before your King or Countrey What confidence can your Prince have of your Loyalty farther than he shall be pleased to tolerate your vanities or you please to do him the favour to call him Soveraign Whatever obedience you yield unto him he must thank you for it as a courtesie but must not claim it as a duty It is clear as the noon-day's Sun that so long as you fear nothing in another world and thereupon resolve to gratifie your humour whilest you live in this you need not run to the Pope's universal power nor the Sectarie's blind zeal for a dispensation to turn rebel your own pleasure or your profit or any thing else you can esteem a part of your earthly happiness or which can court your humour can make all despensations to do mischief needless Yet still are you angry because we will not call our selves fools for believing that our Souls are something and that they shall not vanish into aire or nothing when we die and why because forsooth we cannot know it and all is still no more but Faith 'T is true the things we do believe are things unseen neither can sense or common reason assure us of the truth of those things which we believe shall be hereafter And yet it is no less true that neither of these can enable you to prove our Faith absurd Nay were you but half so much the masters of reason as you would have us think that very reason would assure you that our Faith is reasonable and your opinions fanciful and that we have much more cause to pity your folly whilest we can truly say your wicked and dangerous courses are all built upon an unreasonable fancy than you can have to laugh at us because our honest and conscientious lives are grounded as you suppose upon an uncertain Faith For let our Faith be certain or uncertain you must needs confess it very serviceable to the world it doth much good and hurt it can do none But your opinions be they true or false are so far from any possibility of producing the least good effect that they cannot chuse but be the parents of innumerable mischiefs Some of you indeed have been so rash as to affirm That religion hath been the cause of all the Wars which have disturbed the world with so impotent an eagerness of mind are you wont to declaim against what you do not love that you can regard neither truth nor modesty in those affected heats I will again confess unto you that some religions have been the cause of many wars but the true Christian religion of none and though it be most true that even the Christian Faith hath been the subject of very hot disputes lamentable divisions and most bloudy wars yet he that shall call it the cause of any of these shall only thereby bewray his malice or his ignorance in imputing that to the Christian Faith which is imputable only either to the hatred of its enemies or the errors imperfections and hypocrisies of its professors and always either to the want or too weak measure of it He that reads the Histories of all ages he that hath any insight into the Cabals and mysteries of States he that understands the rules that Christ hath left us cannot chuse but see that most of these evils do clearly spring from the ambition discontent and wantonness of men not truly Christian that punctilio's of honour priviledge and worldy interest kindle those fires which consume our peace and quiet yea he that is half blind may see that those very wars which have been managed with a pretence to Christian zeal have come from the same forementioned fountains and that religion hath only been made a cloak shamefully abused to cover most irreligious designs and actions For if the Faith we profess bind us to nothing more than peace and love and so severely prohibit all self-seeking malice and revenge that it commands us upon penalty of losing all we hope for and suffering all we can fear in another world to deny our selves and love our enemies and bear the cross with patience to return blessing for cursing and good for evil who sees not that the world is made miserable not by the multitude of those who sincerely profess the Christian Faith but because so few do yet imbrace it and so many of those who in shew only and for some secular advantage make profession of it are indeed and truth such as you are Shew me a rebel shew me an oppressor shew me a factious and seditious zelot in a word shew me the man that wittingly and willingly offers the least injury to his neighbour let him preach and pray yea let him wear for fashions-sake all the faces and formalities of religion I will be bold to return him to you again for none of ours and prove to his face and yours that he had never any more to do than you have with the Christian Faith that is to dishonour and blaspheme it and give occasion to unconsidering men to talk unreasonably of things they will not understand But yet our folly say you is most apparent for we pretend unto a certainty of Faith which you think it is impossible for any man to have But stay Sir our folly is not yet so evident as you would have it Such a certainty of Faith your selves I doubt not will be ready enough to grant in some cases as may make it very reasonable for you to acquiesce therein and not interrupt the satisfaction which you thence receive by any farther disputation or doubt Should any of us be so unmannerly as to call you fool because you do believe you are no bastard nay because you do not doubt but you were born of a woman and give you this reason for it that you rest content with a certainty

THE VANITY of SCOFFING OR A LETTER TO A WITTY GENTLEMAN Evidently Shewing THE Great Weakness and Vnreasonableness of Scoffing at the Christian's Faith on account of its supposed uncertainty Together with The Madness of the Scoffer's unchristian Choice 2 Pet. III. 3. There shall come in the last days Scoffers walking after their own lusts Deut. XXXII 29. O that they were wise that they understood this that they would consider their latter end LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1674. THE VANITY of SCOFFING A LETTER Sir I AM most heartily sorry not for my own sake but your's that any thing from you should create me a trouble of this nature That a person honourably descended of noble and Christian Parents solemnly dedicated at his first appearance in the World to the service of our blessed Iesus adorned richly with the most excellent natural indowments wanting no help to nature which an ingenuous and religious education could administer plentifully enjoying all the opportunities of knowing and all the incouragements to do whatever is truly vertuous and noble things acceptable to God and beneficial to the world that a person so every way accomplished as you are should now begin to entertain with pleasure thoughts bordering upon Atheism and give your self up to a course of life so far unworthy of him that bears the name of Christian that it makes it a flattery to call you a Man is I must needs say so great an astonishment to me that I can hardly believe that this Letter which I am now writing to you can any way concern you Yet some ill-sounding words which with no small grief I heard from you in the last discourse we had together have been so great a disturbance to my mind ever since that I could not possibly give my self any rest till I set pen to paper that I might contribute something though it be but a very little in respect of what others out of their greater stock of reason I will not say of charity would have done towards the shaking off your hasty and dangerous resolutions and blunting the edge of that Scoffing wit which incourageth you to hope for so easie a victory over the Faith of us despised Christians but will certainly at last if not timely wrested from you by the charity of some of those whom you most hate wound your self to the very heart I will not beg your pardon either for this my so confident assertion or for presuming to interrupt your secure slumbers and pleasing dreams with this paper You know my Faith and that I think I have as good assurance of the truths I believe as the most conceited Philosopher of you all thinks he hath of any conclusion grounded on the common principles of natural reason or his so much magnified evidence of sense And you either know as well or I wish you did that we poor silly Christians are taught to love most heartily even you who most despise us and especially that part of you which you seem least to know and therefore cannot love your Soul This invites us to repay your scorn with pity and rather than not attempt to do you good for the evil we receive at your hands run the hazard of being yet more hated by you But yet far more than this the zeal we have for those divine and only beauties we admire I mean those sacred truths which you deride but we believe and own our selves obliged to vindicate with all the skill we have constrains us to be thus importunate though we should be sure thereby to lose not your favour only but even whatsoever in this world we can think most dear unto us With this resolution of contemning all your ready censures of bold troublesome and unmannerly if not fool and knave to boot wherewith you have learn'd to reward the charity of those who seek to do you good I now lay before you my thoughts of what you were pleased to utter in my hearing This Sir as near as I remember it was your language Christians are fools to deny themselves the pleasures of this world in hopes of I know not what in a world to come 'T is good to make much of our selves here for we know not what shall be hereafter I could never yet meet with any man that could bring us any certain tidings from that other world you talk of Who can tell us what shall become of us when we die Why should man be so proud as to hope for an Heaven more than other creatures It is a mere madness to deny our selves the things which delight us and which now we may injoy for the sake of that which is uncertain and which we do not know that any man ever did or shall injoy For my own part I am resolved to live here as long as I can and as merrily as I can and let those fools that dance after the pipe of a company of cheating Priests please themselves with the fond hopes of a new life and a Heaven after they are dead These Sir as I well remember and many others much a-kin to these were your expressions I willingly omit your many and various Oaths the usual graces and ornaments and indeed the only proofs you have of such wild discourses I must confess I could not have believed it if my own ears had not heard it that such words as these could have been wrested from you how great then was my wonder to hear them flow so freely from your mouth as thereby to evidence themselves to come from the great abundance of your heart Good God! Is it possible that a man and one that pretends to be the master of all wit and reason should so easily and with such complacency degrade himself into a beast and even pride himself in being the Author of such conceits as if they have any real truth in them must needs make him of no more worth than the horse he rides upon If you can think so meanly of your self I beseech you henceforward walk on foot and make not the poor dumb creature which by submitting himself so gently to a load that he could as easily throw off and trample under foot seems to know you much better than you are willing to know your self to feel so oft your whip and spur What right have you to rule him more than he hath to govern you if you must both perish alike If you should say that you have reason and he hath none I make no doubt but some of your companions will be ready enough to tell you that you know that no more than you do whether you have an immortal Soul or he have none Indeed you can speak and he cannot and so have you one priviledge more than he hath to abuse your tongue to your own ruine It is not my present purpose to shape an answer to all your questions or resolve all your doubts as these would