Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	command_v	forbid_v	vice_n	1,917	5	9.6001	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41173	The interest of reason in religion with the import & use of scripture-metaphors, and the nature of the union betwixt Christ & believers : (with reflections on several late writings, especially Mr. Sherlocks Discourse concerning the knowledg of Jesus Christ, &c.) modestly enquired into and stated / by Robert Ferguson.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1675 (1675)	Wing F740; ESTC R20488	279,521	698

that we need not the Authority of any Man or Church to convince us whose they are but they carry a demonstrative assurance of their Author in themselves The like evidence may be justly expected to attend the Word of God as we find to accompany his Works And indeed Gods End in Revelation being more Noble than his End in Creation and the World being more liable to be imposed on in that matter than in this 'T is but Rational to believe that He should leave at least as conspicuous and glorious impressions and characters of himself upon his Word as upon the Works of his Hands And if men in the writing of Books do not onely leave on them such an impression of Reason that we may know them to be the product of rational Creatures but withal according to their several degrees of accomplishments either as to eminency of knowledg heavenliness of mind elegancy of stile c. do imprint on them those footsteps of their several qualifications that we can for the most part by the very frame of the writing discover its individual Authour It may be justly expected that what proceeds immediately by inspiration from God should carry something in it correspondent to the Wisdom Holiness Power Omniscience and Goodness of Him from whom it Flows And yet let me premise That as we do not build our assurance of the Worlds being the Manufacture of God upon every petty Phaenomenon which like the image of Foam that Apelles struck upon his Table by a hasty cast of his pencil some may be look upon onely as a disport of matter in the fortuitous encounters of one particle with an other but we raise our persuasion on the curious Fabrick of the nobler pieces and the Harmonious Structure of the Universal Machine In like manner we are not so much to seek for the evidences of the Divinity of the Bible in every Verse and Chapter as in the complex of the whole and in the principal Parts Branches and Sections of it The intrinsick Evidences of the Divine Revelation of the Scripture may be reduced to several Heads The First Topick regards the matter of it And here the plain and convincing enlightning of us about natural Truths of which we are at best doubtful is one internal Evidence of the Divinity of the Bible The bringing into Light such things as we could never have thought of which yet being discovered have that admirable Connexion with all true Reason that we are Ravished with the Glory of Truth that shineth in them is a Second The purity and fulness of Scripture-Precepts commanding every Virtue forbiding every Vice and enjoyning nothing either superfluous or burdensome is a Third The greatness and spirituality of the Scripture-promises where we have the nature of Happiness so describ'd and stated the directions for the attainment of it so full and clear the grounds of its certainty so many and incontestable and the whole so fram'd as to be both a powerful inducement to an alacrous and uniform Obedience and a powerful Antidote against all Temptations to sin and sensuality make a Fourth The quality of Scripture Prophesies and the Events still answering the prediction is another undeniable Evidence of the Divinity of the Bible The Nature and exactness of Scripture History relating things of the greatest Weight with the greatest Truth is another Evidence arising from the subject matter of the Scripture It alone informs us of many matters of Fact which no other Writings either have or could and as the knowledg of such things was indispensably necessary so being examined as they are recorded in the Bible we find the account of them rational and satisfactory What other Nations have onely faint glimpses of in fabulous Stories of those the Scripture gives us exact and authentick Records Not to speak of the Date of the Bible it self what Book can vie with it as to antiquity of contents As all Ethnick Histories are latter than some parts of the Scripture so most of them are traductions from thence and are but parts of the Mosaick Story corrupted and debased with Egyptian being Grecian Fables Where have we such an exact and full display of the Origine and several periods of the World and the Original of Nations as the two first and tenth Chapt. of Genesis do afford us Yea in the Narration of such things whereof we have also some register in Humane Records it were not difficult to demonstrate that there are peculiar Characters in the History of the Scripture differencing it from all writings of meer Humane Original and manifesting it to be of Divine extract The Second Head of Arguments by which evidence is given to the Divine Original of the Scripture from the Characters impressed on it respect the Form of it or the manner in which things are delivered and treated And here the Majestick Authority that it dictates to mankind in is hugely remarkable In no other writing whatsoever is there that Soveraignty of Commanding usurped that the Scripture assumes It alone treats with us in a way of Supremacy Majesty and Authority becoming Him in whose Name it pretends to speak Whatever else hath laid claym to the being a Revelation from God to Mankind doth by its sneaking creeping flattering way of address evidently betray the meanness of its Original 2 dly The Stile of the Scripture doth plainly breath of God With what Brevity without Darkness with what Simplicity without Corruption with what Gravity without Affectation with what Eloquence without Meretricious Ornaments with what Plainness without Flatness or Sordidness with what Condescensions to our Capacities without Unsuitableness to the Subject Matter is the Scripture written When the Holy Inspirer of the Sacred Pen-men stoops most to our Capacities he even then retains a Prerogative in his Stile above what is to be met with in meerly Humane Writings There is that Succinctness Prespicuity Plenitude and Majesty in the Stile of Scripture-Laws that Sweetness and Spirituality in Promises that Austerity in Comminations that wonderful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 force and Emotion in Expostulations that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meet Accommodation of Words unto things through the whole Bible that no Humane Writing can equal If there be at any time Obscurity in the Scripture-Stile it is either from the Sublimity of the Matter declared which no Words though never so easie in themselves can help us to adequate Notions of Or it is from some Reference to ancient Customs and Stories which made the Expressions easie to the Age and Persons first concerned in them though they may be Dark to us through our Unacquaintedness with those things that were both the occasion of them and the Key to them Or else it is because they regard Futurities which it was neither for the Safety of the Church in General nor the Interest of Primitive Believers to have had plainly foretold and as the fulfilling of them will give Convincing Light about them so

from all coaction and necessitation by the influence of any Principle forreign to it Now all these are impossible to Matter because That acts always according to the swing of Irresistible Motion nor can it be courted and solicited to Rest when under the forcible Impulse of a stronger Movent 3dly The Immortality of the Soul is plainly demonstrated from the Attributes of God and his Government of the World Without the supposition of a Future State there is no preserving the Authority of God from contempt no due means provided for the preventing men from gainful sins or the encouraging of them to hazardous Duties And accordingly there have been few in the World who have believed a Providence but they have likewise asserted the Immortality of the Soul these two being inseparably connected While we contemplate the state of things in the World we find Prosperity for the most part attending Vice and Misery the Companion of Virtue Good men are usually accompanied with Crosses and have the least proportion of present things while Bad men are often glutted with success and swim in pleasures Now if there were not an Immortal state where both the Virtue of the Good might be compensated and they receive comfort for their Sufferings and the Vice of the Bad might be punished and they receive Vengeance for their Crimes both the Wisdom and Goodness as well as Justice of the Rector of the World would be lyable to censure and Impeachment Yea it seems the better of the two wholly to deny the Providence of God than to think that he should administer humane affairs with so much irregularity and injustice In a word there is nothing can administer a satisfactory resolution in reference to the present dispensation of things in the World but a firm persuasion of the Immortality of the Soul and the Certainty of a Future state Judgments inflicted on Sinners in this life cannot fully clear the Righteousness of God because the best of men are as well involved in them as the worst yea it is but now and then that the greatest Criminals are made as remarkable in their punishments as they have been in their lives Besides an Infinite Eternal God is the Object of Wicked mens contempt and it s his Law who lives for ever whose Authority they despise nor can any punishment be proportionable but what is Eternal also 4ly That inbred desire which is in all men after Immortality argues that there is such really provided for the satisfying this Natural and Universal appetite For 't is not to be Imagined that Nature should furnish us with longings when there is nothing that may content them To have such desires wrought into the complexion and constitution of our Souls were there provision made of nothing that might answer them would not only reflect upon the Wisdom of our Maker who hath produced us with these longings of which there is no use but his Mercy Goodness and Justice also in implanting those Appetites in us which serve at once to abuse and torment us And this leads me to the other particular which I promised to discourse namely the Certainty of Divine Providence This is one of the Truths also which besides the attestation given to it in the Scripture hath evidence enough in the Light of Nature I confess that if we take our Measures in this Matter from the sentiments of the Wisest Heathen we should be ready to think there is no foundation in Reason to convince us otherwise but that all things go at Random It was not the opinion of Epicurus alone but of many others that the Gods concerned not themselves in sublunary affairs Nor did the Poets only discharge God from the Government of the World but their very Moral Philosophers did the same Horaces Deos didici securum agere aevum And Lucans Nunquam se cura Deorum Sic premit ut vestrae vitae vestraeque saluti Fata vacent Are not worse than Plinies Irridendum curam agere rerum humanarum illud quicquid est summum and Senecaes Deus nihil agit nec illum magis beneficia quam injuriae tangunt Even many of them that owned some kind of providence either confined it to Heaven holding it Unsuitable to His Glorious Nature to concern himself about frail and visible things but that he governs them by subordinate Causes as the Grand Seigniour doth his Provinces by his Bashaws Lieutenants or they limited it to effects which depend on a concatenation of Natural Causes to which they are ligu'd by trains and connexions excluding God in the mean time from any Care of Contingent Events or Administration about the Understandings and Wills of Men or lastly they bound it up to Universals and Generals allowing it little or no interposure about particulars and singulars And this seems to have been the opinion of the Author of the Book de Mundo who whether it was Aristotle or Philo or any other is not material The reasons that prevailed with them to question yea deny the providence of God were 1st That 't is beneath and unbecoming the perfections of God and an interruption of his Felicity to concern himself in the affairs of the sublunary World and to distract himself with the cares of it But this is 1. Rather to describe some effeminate Prince than the Deity And 2. It proceeds upon a Foolish mistake an unworthy supposition namely that it is pain and trouble to God to govern the World which none can imagine but they who are ignorant of his Attributes and Being Whatever God can do he does it without trouble to his Infinite perfections Nor 3. Is the Happiness of God more impeached in Governing the World than in making of it If without molestation to Himself he could produce it at first he can without encumbrance Rule it still The 2d Motive that sway'd them to doubt the Providence of God was the Impunity of Wicked Men. But in this they concluded as Illogically as in the former God 1. may have aims in the prosperity of Criminals that we are not aware of and therefore we ought not to reflect on his dispensations when we know not the grounds of them He hereby testifies that severity is not the inclination of his Nature but that punishments are extorted from him He hereby also allows offenders time as well as Inducements to Repentance He also herein sets us a pattern of mercy and forbearance and teacheth us Meekness and Lenity by his own Bounty and Patience He withal gives assurance to the World by this of a future judgment The Prosperity of the Wicked here is a pledge of their punishment hereafter 2. Bad men are not so happy as they are commonly imagined to be How can they be reckoned happy who have nothing succeeding according to their Scope and Meaning Every man intends well to himself but it is the perpetual infelicity of the Wicked that they never reach the mark they aime at For by doing ill they