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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
A52604	The agreement of the Unitarians with the Catholick Church being also a full answer to the infamations of Mr. Edwards and the needless exceptions of my Lords the Bishops of Chichester, Worcester and Sarum, and of Monsieur De Luzancy.	Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.	1697 (1697)	Wing N1503; ESTC R30074	64,686	64

shall be rewarded by God Concerning obscene Words Riot Gluttony Drunkenness impure Desires not forbidden by the Law and not strictly unlawful till prohibited by the Gospel We are not much concerned in such a Dispute it being confest on all hands that they are forbid in the Writings of the New Testament Notwithstanding I wonder that any should say they are not prohibited in the Mosaick Law Some of them were punishable with Death by that Law as Gluttony and Drunkenness by the Law at Deut. 21.20 Luxury Riot Lust and such like are contrary to the Good of a Man's Children and of himself or of his Neighbour and the Commonwealth and therefore are implicitely forbid by that Commandment at Lev. 19.18 which requires that a Man should love his Neighbour as himself I do not love my Neighbour as my self if I am guilty of Luxury or Riot by which my Heir and the Poor are defrauded or if I am guilty of Ambition Covetousness or Lust by which I spoil or grind or wrong my Neighbour Nay Lust Riot Excess Covetousness do unfit us and very much for the Service of God and for the honest and honourable Discharge of our Station whatsoever that be in the Commonwealth therefore they are implicitely forbidden by all those Commandments of the Law that require either the Fear Regard and Service of God or the Welfare and Esteem of our Neighbour or selves XII Concerning Magistrates I believe 't is not lawful for them under the Gospel to inflict Capital Punishment Death on any Offenders no not on Murderers This was the Doctrine of divers of the Fathers of the 3 first Ages scarce any of them believed otherwise Nay they added it is not lawful to go to War as a Souldier or to assist at Executions or even to defend a Man 's own Life by any such resistance as will take away the Life of the injurious Aggressor The Reason they gave for this last was that by killing a Person who attempts to murder me he is dispatched out of the World without Repentance and therefore is certainly damned but the Christian by being killed loses only this Life and enters upon a blessed Immortality Some Unitarians have been of this mind while others have written against the whole Doctrine In short it is not their Doctrine as Vnitarians for some of them have held it while others I believe the most disallow it XIII Concerning some other Points I believe as the Church of Rome believes for we agree with them in several Points of Doctrine What these Points are he tells us at Ch. 9. from p. 201. namely that some things were said by our Saviour by way only of Monition or Counsel not of Command That we Merit by a good Life and may be perfect That all Sins are not damnable That the Prayers of the Living may help the Dead Nay the Author of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity speaks favourably of Transubstantiation Let us begin at the foot of this Account The Author of the Considerations is no otherwise favourable to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation than by saying of it 't is only a Philosophical Error or Folly not an Impiety page 21. And again at page 22. 'T is a Mistake into which the Papists have been cozened by the Philosophy of Aristotle Would Mr. Edwards think a Man favoured the Doctrines in his Books if he called them Mistakes Errors and Follies Mr. Edwards finds Impiety Irreligion Atheism and what not in all Doctrines and all Authors he dislikes We are not so dextrous We sometimes think that we spy an Error or Mistake and sometimes it seems so gross as to deserve the Name of a Folly but to call it Impiety Irreligion Abnegation of Christianity how much soever Mr. Edwards delights in it and makes it his constant Practice as well in Preaching as Writing we cannot approve the Example it being always contrary to Charity Good Manners and Truth The Prayers of the Living may help the Dead There is no Example in Scripture nor I think any solid ground in Reason for such a Belief Mr. Edwards quotes for it but one Socinian Writer nor is that Author positive in the Case He only says Those who believe a middle State of the Dead do well to pray for them That is in case you suppose besides Heaven and Hell some middle place where Souls may repent and reform or where they have not yet received their Doom it is Charity to intercede by our Prayers for them as much as we would for the Living I believe he is the only Writer of his Sect that can be charged with any such thing but we have it in Print concerning a late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury Dr. Sheldon that he prayed for the Dead in his daily Prayers But what one particular Man does or says ought not to be imputed to his whole Party and reported to the World as an Article of their Creed All Sins are not damnable A Christian may Merit by his good Works and may be perfect Merit and Perfection may be truly or falsly said of the Works and Life of a Christian Man according as you interpret the Terms Merit and Perfection Taking 'em in the sense that Protestants use them no Man can merit of God the infinite Recompences of Heaven and of Blessedness everlasting nor was any Man perfect or without Sin but only that Lamb of God who taketh away the Sins of the World But Merit and Perfection are sometimes used in a popular Sense namely for that tho imperfect yet sincere Obedience to God's Commandments to which God has graciously appointed the recompence of everlasting Blessedness in Heaven and for universal Obedience as it is opposed not to Oversights and Frailties but to a wilful Indulging our selves in particular Sins In this Sense every sincere Christian both merits and is perfect Yet I own divers Unitarian Writers have spoke either too loosly or too incorrectly on the Point of Perfection but they have been as much opposed by some of their own Number The same cannot be said concerning the distinction of Sin into Mortal and Venial for our People are positive and unanimous that as St. John words this Matter there is Sin which is not unto Death 1 John 5.16 God Almighty they say hath not appointed Hell-fire for our Frailties and Inadvertencies but for our Contempts and advised Breach of his Laws Some things said by our Saviour are Counsels to such as would be perfect not absolute indispensible Commands to all the Faithful without exception He quotes for this an obscure Passage of one single Socinian Writer who never was espoused in that matter by any of his Party We judg the distinction of Counsels and Commands is a great and very dangerous Presumption a Back-door by which to escape from almost a Man's whole Duty The two Doctrines of Counsels for the Perfect and probable Opinions will furnish the most profligate Wretch in the World with Defences for his very greatest Enormities

Article he makes us believe a great many things as that the first Man was not created in a State of Vprightness As if it were possible that Men in their right Senses should think the first Man was created a Sinner That by his Fall Adam did not lose Righteousness and Holiness which are part of the Image of God As who should say that by being a Sinner he did not sin or become unlike to God That Adam's Posterity have received no hurt or stain by his Apostacy As if you should say that neither his bad Example nor the Curse that made the Earth so much less fruitful was any hurt and that the Rebellion of an Ancestor no not against God is no blot in his Family I shall grow quite out of Conceit with these Unitarians if they say many more such weak things But in very deed I imagine Mr. Edwards had a mind to have charged 'em more home when he does we shall consider what to answer I am of opinion that in this part of the Article he is somewhat ashamed of his own Doctrine and that he feared to make himself and Party ridiculous by a clear and distinct Representation of their Opinion That Mankind notwithstanding Adam's Fall have by Nature an Ability to desire and imbrace all spiritual Good and to avoid all that is sinful or vitious They are bold Britans What imbrace all the Gospel-Precepts by mere Nature When 't is not possible so much as to know divers of them but by Revelation Divine And can they avoid too all that is vitious by only Nature In good truth they are better and stronger by Nature than ever I hope to be in this Life by the super-added Grace of the Gospel But here again he did not strike home he intended more than he durst say and he durst not say it lest we should ask him whether he believes the just contrary That there is no need of the Spirit to repent believe and perform religious Acts. 'T is a serious Point We answer with St. Paul the Spirit HELPETH our Infirmities Rom. 8.26 But we judg for all that the Holy Scripture giveth no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole Duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbour into praeternatural Impulses as if we were Machines and not Men. Or Puppets moved by invisible Wires not Men that act by their own Reason and Choice That Men are Righteous before God not by the Merit of Christ but by their own good Works We answer with all but Antinomians and the more rigid Calvinists the Merit of Christ is not reckoned to us without good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinist or Antinomians would not assent to this Proposition or not allow it to be Orthodox V. Another Branch of our Creed according to Mr. Edwards runs thus I believe concerning a future State that the Souls of the Deceased have no Knowledg or Perception of any thing they are not sensible of any Rewards or Pains and their very Nature is absorpt That at Death the Soul as well as the Body sleeps was an Error of some of the most antient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of them said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in Death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt they both held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why does Mr. Edwards impute that Opinion to us when he had read for he quotes the Book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explication of the Trinity what is our Sense of this Matter The Words there at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus with some of the Fathers The learned Mr. Du. Pinn has noted in his Abridgment of the Fathers that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Foelix and Arnobius were in this Sentiment There was no Reason to object this to Socinus as if it were a peculiar Opinion of his much less to the English Unitarians who never defended it nor that I know of do any of them hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies that we now have but that another Matter or Substance shall be substituted in their Place I see most of our Opposers have affected to mistake our Meaning concerning the Resurrection of the Body We hold nothing that is singular in the case we differ not from the Catholick Church about it We say with St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.35 How are the Dead raised and with what Bodies do they come Thou sowest not the Body that shall be The Body that is raised is not in all respects the same that was committed to the Earth in divers perhaps in the most it is We rise not Infants or decrepit old Men or lame or deaf or any way distorted tho many so lived and so died Nay as to the Passions resulting from the Complexion of the present Body and therefore to be reckoned the Modifications and as it were Parts of our Body we rise not with them it is not the same Body in respect of those Passions that it here lived For instance some are by Complexion very cowardly or pensive or cholerick or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such it will be conformed to the Likeness of the glorious Body of the Lord Christ that is be freed from all both external and internal Imperfections Farthermore our present Body Physicians and Philosophers say is in a continual Flux all the Parts of it internal as well as external continually decay and are continually renewed They decay by the Perspiration that is continually caused by the internal Heat and are continually renewed by the Nourishment taken in and converted into Blood Spirits Flesh and Bones 'T is said by the Learned in these Matters that no Man's Body is the very same as to the Matter and Substance of it this present Year that it was the last Year and will be the next Year 't is wholly new-built by the Nourishment of the present Year We say therefore there shall be a Resurrection of the Body and as some of the antient Creeds spoke of the same Body as truly and as properly as N. N. is the same Man this Year that he was one or seven or twenty Years ago If Mr. Edwards requires us to say more he exacts more than the Church believes for by the Resurrection of the same Body the Church intends only that 't is as truly the same as a Man notwithstanding the Flux of his Parts is now the same N. N. that he was seven or ten Years past yet not altogether the same because inconceivably better that is without any external or internal Deformities or Weaknesses VII I believe that at the Day of Judgment Men shall not be required to give an Account of their Actions the most flagitious Sinners shall not be examined concerning any thing of their past Life only they shall be