Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	reason_n	scripture_n	word_n	4,497	5	4.2578	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35038	Analepsis, or, Saint Peters bonds abide for rhetorick worketh no release, is evidenced in a serious and sober consideration of Dr. John Gauden's sense and solution of the Solemn League and Covenant : so far as it relates to the government of the church by episcopacy / by Zech. Crofton.	Crofton, Zachary, 1625 or 6-1672.	1660 (1660)	Wing C6984; ESTC R7749	30,761	39

first is a clear sophism or charm to vulgar conception Words in oaths do bind They are not saith he the bare words of the Covenant which as charmes can binde any mans conscience to or against any thing It is very true for they may be historically read or repeated by such who are not capable of or concerned in the obligation But Sir if as in our case the words be uttered as expressions of the mind and declarations of the purpose and resolve of the heart to engage God and men to expectation of performance I hope they then binde and that not only because the matter is just true and good but also because declared Is not engagement of expectation in others unto the Obligation of our selves the end of speech in Promises and Oaths whence else is that Caution of Casuists That the words of an oath be plaine and clear and commonly used and understood that the fallacy thereof may fall I wonder at the Doctors Antithesis of words unto the Reason Justice Truth Religion and Duty which we deny not morally and really to oblige men either by Gods generalor particular precepts but yet I cannot believe them to be as Iron or Adamantine bands to chuse good and do it to hate evil and eschew it long before the Wit hs and Cords of mans combining or tying are put upon them by themselves or others This sounds in my ears like new Divinity and morality too oh the folly of Nations who confide more in the Wit hs and Cords of words promises Covenants than in the Iron and Adamantine bonds of Truth Justice and Duty I must confess I was so foolish as to fancy my self bound to an Act because good iust true duty but much faster bound because promised or sworne and I have known many men boggle at an Oath or Promise and fear to break it who would make no bones of Reason Truth Justice Duty but snap them in sunder like a single tie and methinks the Scripture placeth a great deale of firength in the words of a Vow or Oath Deut. 23. 23. That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and performe as thou hast vowed it willingly unto the Lord thy God for thou hast spoken it with thy mouth And sure there was most Adamantine strength in the words of Jephtah which put him into that agony and constrained that Out-cry I have opened my mouth unto the Lord and cannot go back Judges 11. 35. If Oaths and Promises are but wit hs and cords I marvel at the course and customs of Nations to lay them each on other as the only grounds of confidence and I much more wonder mens faith should be more fixed in Gods promises than properties and God though under the Iron bonds of his own mercy justice truth yet for assurance-sake should bring himself under the wit hs and cords of Promise and Oath and then tell us by two immutable things wherein it is impossible Gods should ly we should have strong consolation Heb. 6. 18. His second suggestion is to me no less strange than the first Every mans oath binds by his own imagination viz. Nor can any such Covenant binde any man in any conscienti us bond meerely by the power of a mans own imagination I am sure it can never binde him by the power of another mans imagination Oaths ought to be in words significant whose sence may be obvious to every common capacity shuffling and shifting the sence and signification of an Oath is the snare and perplexity of conscience policy of Hell and Sophistry of the Devil Men must be careful to understand every Religious tie and bond and not list to conceive by prejudice and presumption yet if his own imagination be not that which must guide and binde him I am mistaken I expect men to see with their own eyes and be saved by their own faith and did ever conceive discourse interpretation instruction and argumentation to intend not a Magisterial imposition but information of the minde which might engender a right imagination for men to follow I know not Sir what your Casuist may make of an erroneous conscience but Dr. Ames hath taught us Conscientia quamvis errans semper ligat ille peccat qui aegit contra conscientiam an erroneous conscience doth alwayes bind so that he sins who acts contrary thereunto which cannot be unless the Covenant bind by the power of a mans own imagination His third Answer I do confess is drawn with some considerable strength Oaths bind not to the injury of another for no Covenant can binde us to the injurie of anothers right liberty power or lawful authority private or publique except such as are sui juris involved in himself and so per accidens are hindred and hurt in and by them which I believe he understands for Sir it loseth its strength in the assumption for it appears not that the xtirpation of Prelacy as it is expressed in the Covenant doth take away the liberty power and lawfull authority of King Bishops or Parliament himself tells us the Covenant was levelled against the despoticum tyrannicum Regimem and I have before noted that it is the unwarrantable pomp and power and unlawful authority and superiority of the Bishops above other Ministers which is excluded and to be extirpated by the Covenant untell the Object is agreed on the force of this Argument may well fall Yet give me leave to tell the Doctor it is worth his enquiry whether the power of the King for restitution and of the Bishops for execution and administration of Episcopacie lately acted in England and now endeavoured to be restored be not fully and actually by a just lawfull and compleat Authority abolished and taken away by the statute of 17 Caroli repealing that whole branch of the statute primo Elizabethae which authorized the jurisdiction of Episcopacy and barreth his most sacred Majesty from giving Commissions thereunto and forbidding all Ranks and Orders Ecclesiastical from acting upon any such Commission in any matter or thing whatsoever Sir most men think that this power was lawful and the Hierarchy of England was sui juris too and within the power of King Lords and Commons and this discharge of Episcopacy to have been no injury and to have been acted long before the Covenant did exist and so the Covenant was but an enforcement of this Law and then Sir if there be a Parliament which may look upon Bishops and Episcopacy with a more propitious eye than those who beheld it through the Presbyterian spectacles it will be worth enquiry whether the Covenant as is before noted be not a National Covenant and bindeth not the Parliament from propounding and praying and his most sacred Majesty from assenting unto the re-establishment thereof and so whether the present actings of some Bishops and Deans be not without Legal and just authority and the imposing or endeavouring to return that by Statute abolished and

from Presbyters pag. 21. arrogate unto themselves the sole power of Ordaining Ministers and to be the chief Conservators Cisterns and Conduits of Ecclesiastical authority and Ministerial power page 12. who have not only Precedency and Order but paternal authority page 18. and that not only over people but their Pastors who are by this antithesis fraternal with them and so fillial to the paternal power of the Bishops and make up the paternal fraternal and filial unity of Bishops Presbyters and people pa. 5. Nay in opposition to whom the ordinary Minister or Presbyter is divested of all power and degraded of all dignity among the people and the Bishop as dignified above him so distinguished from him by his Lawn sleeves which is plainly suggested when he tells us The people of England are not to be governed by their equals and inferiors because they are in black Coats page 17. All these expressions with many of the like nature do seem to set up and point out such an Episcopacy as is not Primitive and Regular And I say if this be the meaning of his Episcopacy as the word in the vulgar acceptation by the too long appropriation of it to such an unjust and Anti-christian frame of Government may be understood Truly Sir then I must be free to tell him the sence and very Letter of the Covenant is clear against it and binds the taker in terminis to the extirpation of Prelacy that is to say the Government by Arch-Bishops Bishops their Chancellors and Commissaries Deans Deans and Chapters Arch-Deacons and all other Ecclesiastical Officers depending on that Hierarchy So that it is the thing not its abuse the subject not its adjuncts the Fabrick not its defects and excesses is covenanted against nor will the Covenant be accomplished or the conscience be satisfied by the removal of the pride presumption dulnesse covetousnesse and tyranny of Bishops whilst the preheminence prerogative paternal power and juridical authority assumed by them as distinct from and above all other Ministers of the Gospel as the only immediate Successours of the Apostles and enforced by their High Commission and starchamher with other imperial Courts Officers and proceedings are continued and established nor must he think by his Sophistical comparison to deceive and delude the conscience telling us page 17 18. That they that Covenanted against Popery cannot think they did abjure or must abhorre all those saving truths and duties of Christianity which are mixed with Popery for whatsoever is formal popery though it be an English Masse or Altar that all that though only that must be abhorred and I conceive it yet remains to be proved that the paternal authority of Episcopacy is a saving truth or Christian duty or not of the formality of prelacy and that government covenanted against It is no hard case of conscience to resolve whether a man may use the good and substantial materials of a destroyed Fabrick but I conceive it an high fallacy from thence to impose the very form resolved against You see Sir at what uncertainty we are left whilst the object of the obligation is propounded under a general term whose proper primitive and genuine signification suggests one thing and the vulgar and long-used acceptation suggests another and our resolution is darkned by the multitude of expressions concluding sometimes one and sometimes the other thing which of these shall a conscientious Covenanter embrace You cannot Sir but know the work of a Casuist is to be full and clear in the discovery of the Ratio formalis thing or matter concerning which the conscience conceiveth it self obliged and that it is a great unhappiness in an Interpreter and much greater in a Casuist to resolve obscura per obscuriora But Sir that I may testifie my willingness to understand him and cement what in me lieth the sad differences in the Church Shall I intreat you will please to provoke the Dr. and his Anti-covenant brethren such as seem to advance and promote an Episcopacy scrupled by Covenanters to speak out and clearly to declare whether they will admit the removal of the Government by Arch-Bishops and that late Hierarchy which he concludes page 18 is dead and must rise in another quality and according to what is suggested in the Reduction by him urged consent to the establishment of Congregational Classical Provincial and National Assemb●ies o● Synods of Church-Officers Presbytarial Episcopacy admitted Communi concilio Presbyteror●m to debate and determine the affairs of the Church and exercise all Acts of discipline and Ecclesiastick power In each of which if there be Ignatius his Angel Tertullian his Summus sacerdos or Armagh's Bishop or Super-intendent for order-sake to call Assemblies propound questions gather suffrages require Order and composure in audience and debate pronounce sentence and sign Decrees and to be fixed in that place enjoying all the dignities thereto belonging and to be distinguished by some special denomination from his Chorepiscopi or Colleagues they shall not only enjoy my consent who I hope make conscience of the Covenant but also endeavour which I think will not much need that all the Covenanted Ministers may joyne with them in a Petition to His Majesty that by a Synod by His Majesties Authority called it may be speedily consulted and concluded on under which I doubt not but the Peace of the Church will be preserved and power truth and godliness promoted But if nothing will serve them but Bishops distinct in Office from Presbyters and exercising over them a paternal authority appropriating to themselves the power of ordaining Ministers Domineering Prelacy refused and the succession ro the Apostles and the Jurisdiction before noted we must intreat him to produce those clear pregnant and constant beams of right reason and true Religion which shineth in the brightness and stability of Divine and Humane Laws which may be the pillars of this truth firm supports of duty sure bounds of obedience and safe repose of conscience in this point greatly darkned by the many disputes of Bishops and Presbyters Papists and Protestants nay by the positive assertions of both Papists and Protestant Divines and determinations of Schoolmen who have concluded Bishops and Presbyters to be Ministers ejusdem ordinis equal in Office and authority and in this very case of government all which his very Reduction proposed doth not obscurely suggest Sir the conscience is by him confessed to be more tender than to be deluded with Sophistry or silenced by a pretence of Regulation and Moderation which intends no other save a Reduction of Episcopacy to its pristine and corrupt estate not unto Presbytery Thus Sir I have noted the first Rock and the Doctor 's unhappy dashing against it which must needs render ineffectual whatever he after writeth The inadvertency of his expressions will appear no less evident Inadvertency of expression than his ambiguous state of the Scruple and its resolution if we either observe its fierceness or falsehood The