Selected quad for the lemma: work_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
work_n	good_a	merit_n	merit_v	6,691	5	10.7705	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50771	Religio stoici	Mackenzie, George, Sir, 1636-1691.	1663 (1663)	Wing M195; ESTC R22472	60,332	192

my humour to contemplat how that albeit all Religions war against one another yet are all of them governed by the same principles and even by these principles in effect which they seem to abominat Thus albeit the cessation of miracles be cryed down by many yet do the most bigot relate what miracles have been wrought by the founders of their Hierarchies and what prophesies they have oraculously pronounced And seing all confess that God in our dayes breaks the prosperous upon the same Wheel on whose top they did but lately triumph making fortune adopt the opprest in their vice why should we talk so much of the ceasing of miracles For doubtless these effects are in policy as contrair to nature as are the swimming of iron or sweetning of rivers or rather more Seing in the first mans will is forc'd without which such revolutions could not be effectuated whereas in the last dull and sensual qualities are only wrested which as they are not so excellent so doubtless are not able to make such resistance as the Soul of man Yea I should rather think that the world being become old must doubtless be more dim-sighted as all old things are then formerly and therefore God doth now present greater objects of admiration to our eyes then He did formerly For man is become so atheisticall that if God did not presse His meditations with such infallible testimonies of the being of an irresistable power he would doubtless shake of all resolutions of submitting Thus we see that in all the tract of Iohn's Revelations miracles grow still more frequent the nearer the world draweth to it's grave and like all other bodies the weaker it becomes the more subject it is to all alterations and the less is nature able to resist And it would appear that if miracles were requisit at first for the establishment of Religion even when no older Religion was to cede to it and to make an exit at it's entry much more should miracles be necessar for fixing any Religion against the received constitutions of a previously settled Church But to prosecute my first design it is remarkable that albeit infallibility be not by all conceded to any militant Church yet it is assumed by all Neither is there any Church under the Sun which would not fix the name of heretick and account him almost reprobat who would refuse to acknowledge the least rational of their Principles and thus these Church-men pull up the ladders from the reach of others after they have by them scal'd the walls of preferment themselves That Church-men should immerse themselves in things civil is thought excentrick to their sphere even in ordine ad spiritualia And yet even the Capuchins who are the greatest pretenders to abstract Christianity and Mortification do of all others dipth most in things civil The Phanaticks enveigh against Presbyterian Gowns The Presbyterian tears the Episcopal lawn Sleeves and thinks them the whore of Babel's shirt The Episcopist slouts at the popish Robes as the livery of the beast The Antinomian emancipats his disciples from all obedience to the Law The Protestant enjoyn good works and such are commanded but place no merit in them The Roman-catholick thinks he merits in his obedience The Phanatick believs the Lords Supper but a ceremony though taken with very little outward respect The Presbyterian allowes it but will not kneel The Episcopist kneels but will not adore it The Catholick mixeth adoration with his kneeling And thus most of all Religions are made up of the same elements albeit their asymbolick qualities predomine in some more then in others And if that maxime hold that majus minus non variant speciem we may pronounce all of them to be one Religion The Church like the river Nilus can hardly condescend where it's head lyes and as all condescend that the Church is a multitude of christians so joyn all their opinions and you shall find that they will have it to have like the multitude many heads But in this as in all Articles not absolutely necessar for being saved I make the Laws of my countrey to be my Creed and that a clear decision herein is not absolutely necessar for Salvation is clear from this that many poor Clowns shall be saved whose conscience is not able to teach their judgments how to decide this controversie wherein so many heads have been confounded so many have been lost and so many have been shrewdly knockt against one another from which flinty collisions much fire but little light hath ever burst forth God by His Omniscience foreseeing that it was too dazleing a sight for the pur-blind eyes of man's soul to behold Him invironed with the rayes of divine Majesty did bestow upon us three mirrours wherein we might contemplat Him as we use to look upon the Sun in a tub of water not daring eye His native splendor the one was the mirrour of the Law the second is the works of the Creation and the third is the Soul of man which He Himself hath told us is framed after His own glorious Image As for the first mirrour the Law God knowing that instinct or as we terme it a natural conscience were compleat digests of all that man was to observe He did make that mirrour very little a volumne of only two pages but that mirrour is of late so mullered about by marginal Notes and Commentars that the mirrour it self is almost over-spread by them and it is very observable that in the holy Registers the Law is still abridged but we never see it enlarg'd For albeit the fundamental Laws of both Tables were packed up in narrow bounds yet our Saviour sums them in these two fear the Lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbour as thy self And the Apostle Paul in his divine Epistles professes that he desires to know only Christ and Him crucified So that I am confident that if our Saviour were to preach in person once more to the world He would enveigh against our Casuists as much as He did against the Jewish Talmudists for the one as well as the other are equally guilty of burdening the shoulders of weak christians with the unnecessary trash of humane inventions For I remember to have seen a late Casuist dispute contentiously amongst his other cases whither Tobacco taken in the morning did break a commanded fast or not To which after a feaverish conflict his wisdom forsooth returns this oraculous answer That if Tobacco be taken at the nose it breaks not the fast but if it be taken at the mouth then it breaks the fast Which because I made a Collasterion betwixt the Casuists and the Talmudists I shall only mention out of the Talmude which was the Iews comment upon the Law a case exactly parallel to this wherein is decided that if a man carry a burden on the Sabbath day upon both his shoulders then he is guilty of breach of Sabbath but that he is not guilty if