Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	godliness_n	peter_n	temperance_n	1,046	5	11.2493	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58850	The method and means to a true spiritual life consisting of three parts, agreeable to the auncient [sic] way / by the late Reverend Matthew Scrivener ... ; cleared from modern abuses, and render'd more easie and practicall.	Scrivener, Matthew.	1688 (1688)	Wing S2118; ESTC R32133	179,257	416

of himselfe that infallibly he shall be saved while he remains very deficient in the common and known duties of a true Christian mistaking the true notion and office of Faith which is not so much to teach us what we are our selves but what God is and what is his Will and what our dutie is to him and the effects of obedience and holy life prescribed by him So that justifying and saving faith is Godliness in the power of it and Godlinesse in the power of which St. Paul speakes is a Confluence of all Christian Graces and Vertues the principall of which are reckoned up by St. Peter where he counselleth 2 Epist 1 5 6. to Adde to faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godlinesse and to godlinesse brotherly kindenesse and to brotherly kindnesse Charitie And having profited so far as to be possessed of such Graces to strive as the same Apostle hath it to abound in the same which having competently attained unto gives the best assurance of the good purpose of our heavenly Father to give us the Kingdome promised to them that believe 4. But the presumptuous and preposterous faith whereby men are prone to phansie themselves into the highest favour of God before they have passed through the discipline of Faith which is laboursome and uneasie to Flesh is that which leadeth men into blindnesse of minde and perhaps perdition in the midst of strong perswasions of the contrary our Saviour Christ teaching us so much where he saith Luke 17. 7. Which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle will say unto him by and by when he is come from the field Goe and sit down to meat And will not rather say unto him Make ready wherewith I may suppe and gird thy selfe and serve me and afterward thou shalt eat and drink Which teaches us that it sufficeth not presently to take up our rest of assurance of our salvation by faith speciall so soon as we are called home to God from the wide and wild conversation in the field of this world but must yet farther attend the service God hath for us to doe and then to expect his farther favour of an eternall rest 5. And because amongst various acceptations in holy Scripture of the word Faith it is sometimes used for the Grace of faith and sometimes for the works and fruits of faith every prudent and pious Christian must be very carefull that he puts not such a fallacie upon himselfe as to inferre to himselfe the whole vertue of faith taken in its full latitude upon some particular branch thereof found in him crouding all duties of pietie into one and that rather a preparation unto true religious life than the principall part of it such as knowing and believing and the meanes thereunto tending reading and hearing of Gods holy word For being well initiated in those necessarie principles and helps of devotion there so to stop or in them to improve that acts of faith hope and charitie should be neglected overthrowes the whole design of faith it selfe whereof no small part is to confesse our sins to repent heartily and thorowly to attend to good works and acts of mercie to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance and not to think to commute with God that when he requires private or publique worship we should think it as well and perhaps better to read certain Chapters in the Bible or to be present and heare a Sermon and when God calls to performe good deeds of Charitie in visiting the sick and being at charges for the relief of the poor to exceed in reading and praying supposing such cheaper parts of splendid profession will answer all obligations to God and our necessitous neighbour Whereas it is one principall point of true Christian Illumination by faith to understand what it teacheth us by the Apostle saying Coloss 4. 12. Stand perfect and compleat in all the will of God to the effecting whereof Faith is ordained and given us by God as a tool and Engine not as the work it selfe 6. And therefore the ancient and more experienced Father we read of handsomely and truely reproved the mistakes of three well inclined novices in the sounder part of Piety when the First declaring the course of his Life said with expectation of applause I have got the Old and New Testament by heart Then said the Old man thou hast poured out many words into the air intending he should understand that all that was to very small purpose without proportionable acts of holinesse And the Second said I have wrote over all the Old and New Testament with mine own hand Then said the ancient Father thou hast filled thy windowes with store of paper And the third glorying that the grasse grew on his hearth implying how much cold and hunger he had suffered was answered by the same person Then hast thou driven away hospitality intimating that no man abounding in some good duties must perswade himselfe that he shall thereby make compensation for such defects in other graces willfully neglected being better informed from St. Paul that knowledge and the Scriptures themselves were entrusted with us by God that the man of God may be perfect and thorowly furnished unto all Good workes 2 Tim. 3. 17. And as Davids practice was to have an eye to all Gods commands without exception or limitation Psal 119. 6. 7. Against this if it chances to be objected what vulgarly is said that there is no perfection in this world we may answer without great difficulty That perfection there is in the Scriptures themselves and Christian Religion above what is to be found in any other Authours Sciences or Religions There is a perfection of integritie or of parts which St. Paul to Philemon ver 6. calleth Communication of faith becoming effectuall by the acknowledging of every good thing so that not one vertue or dutie prescribed to a true Christian must be wanting to the true believer however the degrees of those vertues may be and generally are imperfect And yet again having in some degree been initiated into all Christian vertues we are not there to rest as if we had alreadie attained the end of Religion but must prosecute those mean yet good beginnings till we arrive to that pitch which God hath not revealed unto us that he will accept to our justification and salvation but only have a sound firme and comfortable Hope of the Favour of God which some are pleased in these last ages to call Faith justifying But faith properly so called hath for its object truth and that as relating to all men but Hope hath for its object Good and that as pertaining to particular persons of which nature is the perswasion we have of the foresaid Good as truely belonging unto us and thereby as St. John speaks 1 Epist 3. 19. We assure our hearts before him SECT IV. That Faith and not naturall Reason improved is the only

proper Cause of Christian Illumination being taken for the things revealed whereof some principall Heads are here given 1. IT is a common and usefull distinction of Faith by the Learned not difficult to be understood by the unlearned into the matter or articles of our Faith propounded to our assent by God himselfe in his Word and the Gift and Grace of Faith enabling us to believe things so revealed and necessary to our Salvation It will be therefore very expedient for the better informing every plain and sincere capacity to make some recitall of those things our Faith Christian is founded upon and which we are to believe and that principally by Revelation and not wholly to be silent herein any more than St. Luke was in writing his Gospell Luke 1. 1. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order those things which are most surely believed amongst us because severall formes and phrases may help towards the same sense and end of believing and illumination 2. And here first of all is to be considered and believed the great Prerogative of Christian Religion above all other discoveries made to Man when our Saviour Christ in St. Matthew saith Ch. 11. v. 25. I thank thee O Father Lord of heaven and earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and revealed them to babes Not that Christ maligned the knowledge of these things to others but that he admired the priviledges conferred by God upon his mean flock And what these things are and how and to whom revealed St. Paul certifies us 1 Corinth 2. 6 7 8 saying Howbeit we speak wisdome among them that are perfect yet not the wisdome of this world which cometh to naught but we speak the wisdome of God in a mysterie even the hidden wisdome which God ordained before the world to our glory For God hath revealed them by his Spirit For the Spirit searcheth all things even the deep things of God. Meaning hereby to teach us that whatever knowledge man may attain to in the search of the mysteries of Nature Revelation is absolutely necessarie to the knowledge of the deep things of Gods counsell and pleasure concerning his own Nature and Being and our service of him and salvation by him discovery should be made unto us some other way than by our natural reason darkened by our own apostasie and infatuations So that the whole Bible may be called one entire book of divine Revelations the Jew having received many things from God which were denied unto the Gentiles and the Christian having received from God more clear dispensations and sublime than were granted unto the Jew for he beheld things as in a glasse darkly but the other face to face that is the very things themselves and not the darker shadowes which were to flee away at the rising of the Sun of righteousnesse which is by the Apostle called the Mysterie of Christ which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit Whereupon St. Peter 1 Ep. 1. 5. tells us of Gods Elect that they are kept by the power of God through faith unto Salvation readie to be revealed in the last times which last times were the same of which the Apostle to the Hebrews speaks that in the last dayes God hath spoken unto us by his Son and those last dayes were the dayes of the Gospell revealing the mysteries of Godlinesse unto us and not these last dayes phansied by some 3. Now notwithstanding innumerable are the divine documents and notices extraordinarily deliver'd through the New Testament and more especially there be a fair Catalogue given us Heb. 11. of the singular vertues and uses of Faith in revealing divine things yet because we now speak chiefly to babes in Christ or St. Johns Little children it may not be amisse to assist the weaker without offence of the stronger in giving some speciall instances whereby the knowledge of a green Christian is either actually improved or improveable to a greater degree than can readily be found in aliens from Christ 4. There have been in former years some leading men in the Reformation and learned who have collected ten severall and considerable grounds in which all Religions concurre and this was the ingenious contrivance of Bibliander since which divers with tolerable designe but I fear with no good event at all but rather the contrary have in these very late years written about Naturall Religion and the Reasonablenesse of Christian Faith manifested by naturall Light hoping it may be to begett a better opinion in many rank Rationalists of Christian Religion but perhaps they considered not what evill consequence followes from hence viz. that the very first principle of our Christian faith is hereby weakened and more slighted as judged from hence not to be so necessary as commonly is received For Revelations divine and that these writings we call Scriptures are divinely revealed is the most fundamentall part of our Religion which to make credible by sundrie Topicks of reason have been alwaies the practice of the Ancients as it is still of the moderne not illaudable but to offer demonstrations and those such upon which they would constrain belief of that first principle is to cause the whole fabrick of Christian faith to rest on that tottering and unstable foundation and of divine to dilute our faith into humane perswasion all superiour articles of our faith having no stronger stay than such a bottome will allow them 5. And I must confesse for my part I am so far from being pleased with the pretended Golden sayings of Pythagoras or the divine sentences of Plato Seneca and especially that moderner vapourer or rather vapour it selfe Hierocles and such as Eunapius presents unto us that they rather turne my stomach at their aemulation of Christian perfection thereby to lessen the value of Christian Religion it selfe than draw me to affecting or admiring them For St. Paul 2 Corinth 1. 14. tells us 't is By faith we stand and again that our faith it selfe should not stand in the wisdome of men but in the power of God. And it will be found by experience that humane reason thus coming officiously to the aid of divine Faith unable to satisfie the doubting minde about the doctrine proper to Faith will in the end prove so sawcie and domineering as to give law to faith and like Ivie which clings to the tree for a subsistence will weaken it and suck out the heart of it in time Herein therefore consisteth the very soule or as scholasticall men speak the very formall reason of Christian faith illuminating otherwise than the humane Lights of this world that we believe what we have not seen by sence nor learned by experience viz. That the Scriptures we now are possessed of are the Revelations which God hath given us for our instruction and direction in the knowledge of him and holy conversation