Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	scripture_n	spirit_n	word_n	12,728	5	4.8461	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A55143	A sermon preached at the funeral of Mr. Jos. Glanvil late rector of Bath, and chaplain in ordinary to His Majesty, who dyed at his rectory of Bath, the fourth of November, 1680, and was buried there the ninth of the same month / by Jos. Pleydell ...	Pleydell, Josiah, d. 1707.	1681 (1681)	Wing P2569; ESTC R17110	10,677	28

will disappoint our expectation by their transcendency as much as in all other fruitions their emptiness is wont to do So that Eternity though but a circumstance which does only superinduce a kind of extremity or perfection to what it is conjoyn'd with and may as well be drawn in to enhanse our misery for what more than this makes the condition of the damn'd so horribly dreadful whereby they are excluded from all hope the very seed and lowest degree of felicity Yet is it so necessary to what we are speaking of as that without it those joys of Heaven though otherwise absolute and infinite would suffer a contradiction and become imperfect And that not only for the future but the present by introducing such passions as must needs debase and allay the highest delights So that by being thus secur'd in the possession of our happiness we receive thereby an unspeakable addition to it II. Proceed we next to shew you the Security and Evidence upon which this happiness is promis'd and asserted and whether it bear any proportion to our duty and the Rewards of it for so we are allow'd to call them though not upon the account of merit yet by reason of their necessary connexion with dependance upon and that kind such a one as 't is of proportion they bear to each other There is a two-fold evidence God Almighty has given us for the strengthning of our hope and confirming of our faith in the belief and expectation of the other World The first moral grounded upon the testimony of the Spirit the other I call natural and is grounded in the things themselves 1. The first evidence of our future bliss is the testimony of the Spirit express in the Text Yea saith the Spirit But then we must have a care of what kind of Testimony of the Spirit we understand it for understand it as 't is vulgarly taken for some act or operation wrought in and upon us besides the Enthusiasm of it fain would I be satisfy'd what validity can there be in such a testimony as it self needs something else to confirm it for so this testimony of the Spirit is to be tryed by its concordance and agreement to the word of God nor do I know any other way to distinguish it from a motion or suggestion of the Devil 's besides And though to err thus in this single instance may not be very pernicious for I am not mighty solicitous how it was wrought so there be a firm perswasion in us of this truth yet in other cases I know how dangerous it is nor is it safe in this for it leaves a passage open and unguarded to down-right Atheism By the testimony of the Spirit therefore I understand the word of God or the Scriptures as made known and prov'd to us to deriv'd from this Divine Spirit which we may call the outward testimony thereof for though St. Iohn knew this by the other way as most certainly all others did who received any Revelation yet never was any other than the person himself assur'd that way Nor do I make degrees of more or less certainty in the way or manner of the Spirit 's revealing a thing for the Apostles were as well assur'd of the infallibility of their doctrine before they wrought any miracles as we are by them but we were not nor could be so But this notwithstanding in respect of us we must admit of such degrees for no body I hope will be so blasphemous to equal such private dictates they have in their own breast to the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures So then I make this to be the moral evidence of future happiness God hath said it in his word And this I call a moral certainty not in opposition to divine and infallible as they are sometimes contradistinguish'd but only to natural for we can desire no greater evidence we cannot have a higher confirmation of any truth than the veracity of Heaven to attest it I do not know any proposition that carries greater self-evidence than this That God ought to be believ'd in what he says and therefore though we may question the truth of the Revelation 't is impossible to do so of any thing we acknowledge to be so revealed So that the stress of this point lyes upon that great and necessary praecognitum in our Religion namely the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures Upon which postulate if we proceed there is as great certainty of the truth of this proposition That good men shall enjoy eternal happiness after this life as if we should again hear that Daughter of voice and God himself should sensibly attest it 2. But there is another ground or evidence of our future happiness which I call natural because it depends upon that Intrinsick Relation and consent there is between goodness and it the difference between them being only in degree like the dawning of the Morning to the lustre of the Noon For what is it to be happy but to be united to God and what does unite us to God but Love and what is the love of God but Religion And if you remove but all inward imperfections and all outward impediments there remains no difference at all So that Virtue and Piety do not only dispose and prepare us for Heaven and Salvation but we thereby receive and experience the very beginnings and anticipations of it And though in respect of the mutability of our will and affections toward God and goodness in this world we cannot be infallibly assur'd of it as to our own particulars because every alteration in the one produceth a like answerable effect as to the other Yet in the general we may even from hence be very well assur'd hereof because there is nothing more requir'd to the compleating of our essential happiness than an advance and progression in the same vertuous tract And however it looks in a Divine if we will speak rationally to the thing we must allow the love and hatred of God to be the true natural causes of our salvation and damnation even of their very eternity it being naturally impossible to be other than happy while we love God and contrariwise if we hate him and this is the only instant cause of its continuation through all the durations of Eternity And to remove your astonishment see how in this lower world many stupendous and admirable works are daily produc'd which were mean and unnoted while they lay hid and contain'd in the seminal beginnings after the same wonderful manner by divers minute gradations does this divine Creature grow up from its first formation in our trembling and unstable desires to the stature and perfection of Everlasting Glory And yet there remains less doubt if we take in the Consideration of the Divine nature How else will you vindicate the Justice of God in all the odd and confused occurrences of this World Where 's your infinite goodness and bounty that suffers its servants always to

A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL OF M r. Jos. Glanvil Late Rector of BATH and Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty Who dyed at his Rectory of Bath the fourth of November 1680. and was Buried there the Ninth of the same Month. By Ios. Pleydell Arch-Deacon of Chichester LONDON Printed for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and the White Hart in Westminster-Hall 1681. REVEL XIV Ver. 13. And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed are the dead which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them THe more attentively we consider the Christian Religion in any of its parts we find greater grounds for the confirmation both of its Author and excellency so infinitely does it surpass all those writings of that nature which the great Sages of the World have with so much superciliousness on their part and admiration from their respective followers I may add too all things considered not without meriting due praise from us delivered to their Scholars And this will appear evident and undeniable if we but parallel them in any of the chief heads for instance in the principles upon which our Religion does proceed the precepts it contains and the rewards it appoints which division will comprize the summ of what we profess In all which the great Masters of Heathen wisdom do plainly discover either a great deal of Ignorance or malice in prevaricating that light they had reflected upon them from Jewish tradition so that it may be well doubted whether their Symbolick Divinity were not design'd rather to conceal their own Ignorance in what they pretended to than to secure the rites and mysteries thereof from the vulgar's profanation For example 1. Take first the Principles those truths that are the Basis and foundation of our Religion such as are the Being and Nature of God the Creation of the World the Fall of man and his Redemption by a Messias the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection 't is plain the whole Philosophick world had none or but a very imperfect knowledge of almost all of them However some of their lavish Charity have endeavour'd to squeeze as much from their writings Nay that they were not without some knowledge of our greatest Mysteries viz. of a Messias under their Daimono-Latria and even of the Trinity in Plato's Triad and the Resurrection of the body under the Indians Palin-genesis But no body that has any veneration either for the Scriptures or but for Truth in general but must see and acknowledge that all this is but tortur'd from them Nor may we deny this further that whatever Notions of this kind they had were but traditional in respect of their Origine and conjectural in reference to their ambiguity and uncertainty 2. The like is to be said of their Rules and Precepts of virtuous living For we may not detract thus much from them that they have recommended many excellent Institutes to their Sects You shall collect among them many very admirable sayings such as these To know our selves to abstain from vice to bear afflictions to do justly and speak truly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do as we would be done by and many more Indeed for that kind of Divinity which was deducible from the Rules of common prudence and observation and depended not chiefly or solely upon Divine Revelation they have done extraordinary well And if they had not furnish'd us with so many famous examples of Vertue too it would not reflect so much upon the Professors of Christianity which in the spirituality of its precepts has as far exceeded all that they have writ as some of their Lives have most of ours though that be not to be imputed to our Religion unless it were justly chargeable upon the vitiosity or defect of its Principles or Rules Thus miserably however do we compensate the Divine culture and as if Nature abhorring so great a disparity betwixt mankind would thus ballance the Heathen with the Christian World by opposing their Imperfect Knowledge but severer Vertue to our diviner Laws but greater licentiousness in Practice Many of them having by as great proportions exceeded us in their endeavours after goodness as we do them in the knowledge and other means of it 3. Last of all which brings it to our present subject Christianity propounds nothing but upon the fairest and surest encouragement imaginable For the happiness of our Religion is both transcendently superiour to their discoveries and accompts of it and then also we are sufficiently and unquestionably assur'd hereof i e. 't is not recommended to us upon plausible perswasions and inconclusive arguments but in the genuine sence of St. Paul's expressions 1 Corinth 2. 4. in demonstration of the Spirit and Power So that we see there is a kind of peculiar excellency in the Holy Scriptures above all the Systems of the greatest Moralists the foundation of our Obedience being laid upon clearer and better principles the practice of our obedience being carried higher by the spirituality of its commands and the rewards of our obedience being incomparably greater than what we can conceive much less could they promise or bestow 'T is the last of these that is contain'd in the Text and for which I am to be further accomptable to ye in the prosecution of the words I have read And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me Write Blessed c. Wherein we have these following particulars principally to be observed 1. The happiness of good men describ'd by its general nature they are blessed and by its integral parts they rest from their labours and their works do follow them 2. The Security and Evidence upon which this happiness is promis'd and asserted yea saith the Spirit 3. The time of its perfection and accomplishment partly in this life but not fully nor completely till death saying Blessed are the dead that dye in the Lord. 4. And lastly the Influence which the consideration of these premisses ought to have upon us both in Life and Death in reference to Obedience and Patience And I. To begin with the description of that happiness those rewards which are propounded to us for the encouragement of our Obedience and Patience Which are so great that I am utterly ignorant by what measures to describe them to ye The nature of that Celestial bliss as far transcending all our present felicities by which we should judge of it as it does the very capacity of our meriting it Sir Francis Bacon has observ'd We can have but a very imperfect accompt of those things which receed any whit near those extreams of Nothing and Infinity because either by their parvity or immensity they elude or confound our knowledge And especially the latter which choak the understanding and is like the beholding of the Sun whose light and lustre by which we discern other objects marrs and dimms our