Concordance

“ He published: 1. ‘The Scripture's Concord; or a Catechisme,’ &c., 1646, 8vo; 5th edit., 1653, 8vo; 1673, 8vo (this was translated into Welsh, with title ‘Cordiad yr Isgrythyran,’ 1647, 8vo) . 2. ‘God the Father Glorified,’ &c., 1649, 4to; 2nd edit., 1650, 8vo. 3. ‘Truth's Conflict with Error,’ &c., 1650, 4to (contains the disputation with Goodwin, from the shorthand of John Weeks) . 4. ‘Christ and Moses Excellency,’ &c., 1650, 8vo (the second half is a concordance of Scripture promises) . 5. ‘Three Hymnes,’ &c., 1650, 8vo (one by Powell) . 6. ‘Christ Exalted,’ &c., 1651, 8vo. 7. ”

“ The principle of the agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts; the principle of their disagreement consists in the variety and irregularity of the occasions on which they arise in the mind. That in which they agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything to nothing. ”

“ When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from being immediate ”

“ I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life. And I had a grand conception laid before me of changes to be effected in the condition of mankind through that doctrine. The Traiti de Legislation wound up with what was to me a most impressive picture of human life as it would be made by such opinions and such laws as were recommended in the treatise. ”

“ So then, if we be asked a reason of our covenant, here are reasons, clear reasons, easy to the weakest understanding, yea, open to every man's sense. Who amongst us hath not felt these reasons? and how many have smarted their proof unto us? And as these reasons are so plain, that the most illiterate and vulgar understandings may conceive them; so they are so weighty and cogent, that the most subtile and sublime understandings cannot but be subdued to them; unless, because they are such masters of reason, they have resolved to obey none. ”

“ We have to keep a firm hold of what is certified to us, on either side, by its appropriate evidence, and leave the reconciliation, if it can ever be given to finite beings, to a higher wisdom, and, perchance, to another world! ”

“ It remains to note that such phrases as 'Being and Nothing are the same,' or 'The unity of Being and Nothing'—like all other such unities, that of subject and object, and others—give rise to reasonable objection. ”

“ In the Middle Ages a compromise had been made by which two different orders of truth, religious and scientific, had been recognized, in order that a schoolman might say that two and two make four without being burnt for heresy. ”

“ There must be a tacit or an open understanding, a sort of covenant or convention, that only volitions and acts so differentiated shall be considered as volitions and acts of the said moral person whom that one or those several individuals are supposed to represent. ”

“ We only pretend to assert, what every one that pretends to reason must acknowledge, namely, that there is a manifest distinction between an express Scripture declaration, and the conclusion or inference which may be deduced from it ”

“ It is hard to find any one phrase that characterizes these consequences better than the ordinary agreement-formula—just such consequences being what we have in mind when we say that our ideas ‘agree’ with reality. ”

“ Useful in the discussion of a controversy, in the demonstration of a theory, in the uncertainties of a commentary, it possessed more than any other the authority needful to lay down, without discussion, the value of a doctrine. ”

“ To cut knots by dogmatism, and to tie them by sophistry, are employments equally vain. It cannot be denied that there are in every multitude both a unity and a plurality, one or the other of which must be preferred as the principle of concord for the verb or the pronoun, or for both. ”

“ Thus in the union of the soul and body, in the constitution and authority of the human commonwealth, and in the race's natural unity, God holds before us three analogies, which each in some respect, and altogether very largely, illustrate His finished work, to which all natural productions of His providence are subordinate, His work of predilection, His work of unbounded love and sovereign magnificence, the creation of that which is at once the Body, the Kingdom, and the Family of the Incarnate Word. ”

“ The power in the word, then, which I wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of another. ”

“ And if we reflect upon the distinctive form of unity thus exhibited by each department of being—upon the dominant character pervading the differences within it and their cohesion—we may formulate certain 'Axioms', condensing once more into isolated judgements truth for which the evidence is overwhelming. Such 'truths' are stable, not because they, as judgements, hang together of themselves, but because they are but the concentrated expression of a whole of knowledge. ”

“ If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. ”

“ Agreement to differ is not unity: an agreement to pretend that the differences were not there would not even be honest. What is needed is a sympathetic study of the divergent traditions and principles which lie behind existing differences, with a view to discovering which are really differences of principle, and which rest merely upon prejudice. ”

“ Knowledge, as has been shown, consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. Now, where that agreement or disagreement is perceived immediately by itself, without the intervention or help of any other, there our knowledge is self-evident. ”

“ Rule of Agreement: "If, whenever a given object or agency is present, without counteracting forces, a given effect is produced, there is a strong evidence that the object or agency is the cause of the effect." ”

“ Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are available by consent.
No nobler or clearer example than this could be given of what an idea is as contra-distinguished from a conception of the understanding, correspondent to some fact or facts,
quorum notæ communes concapiuntur
, — the common characters of which are taken together under one distinct exponent, hence named a conception; and conceptions are internal subjective words. Reflect on an original social contract, as an event or historical fact; and its gross improbability, not to say impossibility, will stare you in the face. ”

“ A general intimation of intentions, which being so stated every one would approve, passed quietly, and the subject dropped. It is the peculiarity of discourses on theological subjects, that they are delivered and they are heard under an impression, both on the part of the speaker and of his audience, that each is in possession of the only reasonable and moderate truth; and so long as particulars are avoided, moderation is praised, and all men consent to praise it—excess is condemned, and all agree in the condemnation. ”

“ Their principles and parties are represented as maintaining a continual struggle, and the various facts of the history are explained as the prevalence of one or the other set of opinions, or the result of compromise. ”

“ In the comparison of views between the three classes some reasonable ground of compromise will generally be found; and if error is committed we prefer that it should enure to the benefit of the many, instead of, as heretofore, to the benefit of the few. ”

“ My small experience of life has taught me that when two reasonable people, or even three, hold different views on any given subject, there is always something to be said in favor of each contention. Indeed, wisdom leans towards a compromise in such a case. ”

“ The first and great principles of the light of nature, on which natural religion is founded, are here, in a warm, and long, and learned, dispute, not only taken for granted on all sides, and not the least doubt made of them, but by common consent plainly laid down as eternal truths, illustrated and urged as affecting commanding truths. ”

“ There will be special reason why those who have had special concerns together in this world, in their state of probation, and whose mutual affairs will be then to be tried and judged, should especially be set in one another’s view. Thus we may suppose that rulers and subjects, earthly judges and those whom they have judged, neighbors who have had mutual converse, dealings and contests, heads of families and their children and servants, shall then meet, and in a peculiar distinction be set together. And especially will it be thus with ministers and their people. ”

“ We BY DEGREES get ideas and names, and LEARN their appropriated connexion one with another; and then to propositions made in such, terms, whose signification we have learnt, and wherein the agreement or disagreement we can perceive in our ideas when put together is expressed, we at first hearing assent; though to other propositions, in themselves as certain and evident, but which are concerning ideas not so soon or so easily got, we are at the same time no way capable of assenting. ”

“ Or when there is no natural division at all in a cause, and when it is a simple question that is under discussion, though that is a thing which cannot be of frequent occurrence, still we must use careful arrangement. And these other precepts also, with respect to the division of subjects which have no such great connexion with the practice of orators, precepts which come into use in treatises in philosophy, from which we have transferred, hither those which appeared to be suitable to our purpose, of which we found nothing in the other arts. ”

“ The truth of the new doctrine is proved by accumulated instances of God’s working in nature and in history; the objections of opponents, whether advanced in good faith or in jest, are controverted by arguments ”

“ But we have already said that we regard this Resolution as the utterance of a sentiment, and we had no confidence that it would assume the shape of a tangible practical proposition, which would yield the fruits of the sacrifice it required. Our people are influenced by the same want of confidence, and will not consider the proposition in its present impalpable form. ”

“ As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place a latitude is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. ”

“ All that which claims our assent on those higher grounds of which theology takes cognizance, must claim such assent as is consistent with those grounds; that is, it must require belief in respect of all that bears upon the highest relations of our being, those on which depend our duties and our hopes. ”

“ The answer is, that the objects of thought about which we make judgments are suppositions, and our judgments {88} concern their fulfilment, and their fulfilment is a relation external to them—it is their agreement or disagreement with reality. ”

“ That class of assents which I have called Credence, being a spontaneous acceptance of the various informations, which are by whatever means conveyed to our minds, sometimes goes by the name of Opinion. When we speak of a man’s opinions, what do we mean, but the collection of notions which he happens to have, and does not easily part with, though he has neither sufficient proof nor firm grasp of them? ”

“ The unity to which the understanding reduces impressions is the unity of a proposition. This unity consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject; and, therefore, that which is implied in the copula, or the conception of being, is that which completes the work of conceptions of reducing the manifold to unity. ”

“ And the greatest labour of human beings hitherto has been to agree with one another regarding a great many things, and to impose upon themselves a law of agreement—indifferent whether these things are true or false. ”

“ Any point of doctrine, which is so obvious, that it scarcely admits of dispute, but at the same time so important, that it cannot be too often inculcated, seems to require some such method of handling it ”

“ The object of these addresses is to try and understand the principles on which rest the differences which divide Christian bodies from one another. Our tendency, when first we are brought face to face with such differences, is to approach them from the point of view of common-sense, to consider them as contained in so many formulated statements which can be discussed on their own merits. But this attitude is soon found to be superficial. The causes of disagreement lie deeper than the surface. ”

“ Words that need no rhetoric to press them, nor any comment to explain them: they are so plain, that every one may understand them; and so severe, that every one, who either transgresses, or performs not, who doeth any thing against, or nothing for the words of this covenant, hath just cause to tremble at the reading of them: I am sure, to feel them will make him tremble. ”

“ And we are bold to say, that we can draw proof and arguments to justify our belief in the system we profess, from this holy word, and from its hallowed pages can we read a direct declaration from the mouth of its Author, against the crafts and plans of men. ”

“ When, in the domestic relations, we meet with such varieties of law, of custom, of sentiment, of belief, thus indicated by a few examples which might be indefinitely multiplied, it may be imagined how multitudinous are the seeming incongruities presented among the social relations at large. ”