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There is the immense tribe of human spirits, in a most peculiar and alarming predicament, held under eternal obligation of conformity to a law proceeding from the holiness of that Being, but perverted to a state of disconformity to it, and opposition to him.
Bishop Lindsey by name will trade in the same way, and will have us to think that kneeling in the act of receiving the communion, and keeping of holidays, do not sort us with Papists; for that, as touching the former, there is a disconformity in the object, because they kneel to the sign, we to the thing signified.
Verily, that people should be taught that the disconformity between the Papists and us is not so much in any external use of ceremonies, as in the substance of the service and object whereunto they are applied.
The latter can neither be true nor false; the only character it is susceptible of is that of conformity or disconformity to the ordinary usage of language.” There is a real distinction, then, between definitions of names, and what are erroneously called definitions of things; but it is, that the latter, along with the meaning of a name, covertly asserts a matter of fact.
Since names and their signification are entirely arbitrary, such propositions are not, strictly speaking, susceptible of truth or falsity, but only of conformity or disconformity to usage or convention; and all the proof they are capable of, is proof of usage; proof that the words have been employed by others in the acceptation in which the speaker or writer desires to use them.
Since names and their signification are entirely arbitrary, such propositions are not, strictly speaking, susceptible of truth or falsity, but only of conformity or disconformity to usage or convention; and all the proof they are capable of, is proof of usage; proof that the words have been employed by others in the acceptation in which the speaker or writer desires to use them.
And why still is this wrong plac'd distinction made, but because there are measures of living establish'd by Men themselves according to a conformity, or disconformity with which, and not with the Precepts of Jesus Christ, their Actions are measur'd, & judg'd of?
Saith not the Bishop himself elsewhere of the Papists, “In the sacrament they kneel to the sign,” whereby he would prove a disconformity between their kneeling and ours; for we kneel, saith he, “by the sacrament to the thing signified.” Now if the Papists in the sacrament kneel to the sign, then they have idolatrously abused kneeling, even in the participation; for the Bishop dare not say that, in the elevation or circumgestation, there is either sacrament or sign. 2.
He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility those, however they be miscalled, that desire to live purely, in such a use of God's ordinances, as the best guidance of their conscience gives them, and to tolerate them, though in some disconformity to ourselves.
The latter can neither be true nor false; the only character it is susceptible of is that of conformity or disconformity to the ordinary usage of language.” There is a real distinction, then, between definitions of names, and what are erroneously called definitions of things; but it is, that the latter, along with the meaning of a name, covertly asserts a matter of fact.
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