Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	covenant_n	old_a	testament_n	1,680	5	9.6229	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42085	Discourses upon several divine subjects by Tho. Gregory ...	Gregory, Thomas, 1668 or 9-1706.	1696 (1696)	Wing G1932; ESTC R7592	108,242	264

Reflections upon the inestimable Happiness of Good Men in the other World he in the very last Words dash'd all with an open undisguis'd Acknowledgment of his remaining Doubts and Jealousies Sub finem Apol. apud Platonem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Could I be assur'd says he a little before of the Reality of this Blessed State I would gladly die a thousand times over to enjoy it But now my Judges the time of my Departure is come 'T is your Lot to live and mine to die which of these two is the Better 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a thing utterly unknown to any but God alone In short Dicaearchus Democritus Epicurus and their Followers as constantly as positively declare That there is no Subsistence of the Soul after this Life but that when the Body returns to Dust she immediately relapseth into the bottomless Abyss of Annihilation and Darkness And then for the Jews at the time of our Saviour's Coming they stood much upon the same Level For though from the Translation of Enoch and Elias and the Death of their Patriarchs who never inherited the Promises of Temporal Felicity and particularly that of Moses which their Rabbins are pleas'd to call The Kiss of God's Mouth intimating thereby that he breathed out his Soul by the Force and Energy of Contemplation without those Pains and Convulsions which are the usual Concomitants of the Death of other Men resolving himself into the Embraces of his Maker From the positive and express Words of Job which however some Modern Commentators are pleas'd to understand them are I conceive with S. Hierom and the Ancients as plain and clear a Confession of the Resurrection as any that have been made since the Promulgation of the Gospel From the glorious Confession of that excellent Woman and her seven Children in the Maccabees who all refus'd Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection and from those many Promises of Eternal Life scatter'd up and down in the Book of Psalms and other Writings of the Old Testament Though I say from all these one might reasonably expect the Jews should have had some fuller and clearer Knowledge of the State after Death yet being no part of that Covenant which if strictly considered as made with that People at Mount Sinai was founded only upon Temporal Promises Peace Long Life Plenty and Prosperity in their own Land they had generally no other Effect than that they were believ'd to be the Reward of Men of Heroick and Extraordinary Piety Nay their unaccountable Blindness and Unattention to the Faith and Manners of their Fathers who did all eat the same spiritual Meat and did all drink the same Spiritual Drink as we Christians do occasion'd so many Cavils and Disputes amongst them that the Sadduces peremptorily deny'd it not only decrying the Resurrection of the Dead but affirming likewise with the foremention'd Epicureans that the Souls of Men did perish together with the Body And tho' the Pharisees on the contrary confess'd it yet their Notions of it as Josephus himself * Antiq. Jud. l. 18. c. 2. who was one of them tells us were no better than those of Fairy-Land or Elysian Dreams Delicious Dwellings flowery Fields Crystalline Rivers and beautious Trees of Gold under whose delightful shade they should play and toy away a whole Eternity with fair and amorous Virgins was the utmost Heaven they could or car'd to imagine and therefore the Sadduces so often foil'd and buffled them with that Argument of the Woman and her seven Husbands which they thought to be so conclusive that but with different Success they attack'd likewise with it our Saviour himself But now the Veil is taken off by Christ and we behold the Glory of the Lord with open Face For this says the Apostle is the Promise that he has promis'd us even Eternal Life A Life not of sensual and brutish Pleasures not a Paradise of all Filthiness and Debauchery whereby the Epileptick Impostor has likewise impos'd upon his Followers but a Life of perfect Purity and Holiness a Life of immaterial spiritual abstracted Joys of chaste and rational Delights where our Nature shall be entirely conform'd to the Divine made like to God and we enjoy an endless and uninterrupted Communion with our Maker This he has promis'd and of this he has given us Assurance all the Assurance the thing is capable of in that he has not only rais'd himself from the Dead but call'd likewise some of our Brethren already out of the Grave and taken them up with him in their glorious Bodies to enter before-hand upon the Possession of this promis'd Inheritance So that we may boldly say with the Apostle We know for certain and are fully assured that if this earthly house of our Tabernacle be dissolved we have a Building of God an House not made with hands eternal in the Heavens Thus has the Sun of Righteousness dispell'd all those Clouds of Ignorance and Darkness which overspread the whole World at his Rising and brought Life and Immortality to perfect Light thro' the Gospel Which must certainly be acknowledg'd to be a very great Salvation if we consider in the next place that he has hereby rescu'd us from that base and slavish Fear of Death by reason of which we had otherwise been all our life-time subject to Bondage 6. Now how unwelcome soever Death must be to those Men to whom 't is therefore all Terror before because all Darkness behind who are therefore dismay'd at his Approach because they know not the Consequences of this King of Terrors 't is impossible that Person should immoderately fear Death who considers that 't is only a Passage from this Wilderness to the true Canaan the Rest above that flows with Milk and Honey with Innocence and Happiness for ever who knows that the Death of the Saints is not total but that as in the Ceremony of Purification from Leprosie one Bird was kill'd the other let fly into the open Air the mysterious Shadow of the Lepers being restor'd to a state of Liberty so when the Body dies and returns to the Earth the Spirit is freed from the Clogs of Mortality and returns with Songs of Joy and Triumph in its mouth to the Object of its Happiness the God that gave it Nay the faithful Christians the true Lovers of Jesus who have tasted the Goodness of the Lord and long consider'd and well weighed the incomparable Difference between the mean imperfect frail Felicities of this present World and the substantial solid immutable Glories of that which is to come must certainly cry out with the inflamed * Cant. 1.4 Spouse Draw us and we will run after thee O! loosen our Affections from this World that we may readily ascend to thee Their longing Souls will renew the passionate Sighs of the Exil'd Prophet O when shall we come and appear before the presence of God! How welcome must Death be to them when it comes as it were with