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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63641	Antiquitates christianæ, or, The history of the life and death of the holy Jesus as also the lives acts and martyrdoms of his Apostles : in two parts.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667. Great exemplar of sanctity and holy life according to the christian institution.; Cave, William, 1637-1713. Antiquitates apostolicae, or, The lives , acts and martyrdoms of the holy apostles of our Saviour.; Cave, William, 1637-1713. Lives, acts and martydoms of the holy apostles of our Saviour.	1675 (1675)	Wing T287; ESTC R19304	1,245,097	752

chance of a Battel that although it be necessary for defence of the godly that a special Providence should intervene yet to confound the impious no special act is requisite If God exposes them to the ill aspect of a Planet or any other casualty their days are interrupted and they die And this is the meaning of the Prophet Jeremy Be not ye 〈◊〉 at the signs of Heaven for the Heathen are dismayed at them meaning that God will over-rule all inferiour causes for the safety of his servants but the wicked shall be exposed to chance and humane accidents and the signs of Heaven which of themselves do but signifie or at most but dispose and incline towards events shall be enough to actuate and consummate their ruine And this is the meaning of that Proverb of the Jews Israel hath no Planet which they expounded to mean If they observe the Law the Planets shall not hurt them God will over-rule all their influences but if they prevaricate and rebel the least Star in the firmament of Heaven shall bid them battel and overthrow them A 〈◊〉 shall lie in a wicked Man's way and God shall so expose him to it leaving him so unguarded and defenceless that he shall stumble at it and fall and break a bone and that shall 〈◊〉 a Fever and the Fever shall end his days For not onely every creature when it is set on by God can prove a ruine but if we be not by the Providence of God defended against it we cannot behold the least atome in the Sun without danger of losing an eye nor eat a grape without fear of choaking nor sneeze without breaking of a vein And Arius going to the ground purged his entrails forth and fell down unto the earth and died Such and so miserable is the great insecurity of a sinner And of this Job had an excellent meditation How oft is the candle of the wicked put out and how oft cometh their destruction upon them GOD distributeth sorrows in his anger For what pleasure hath he in his house after him when the number of his moneths is cut off in the midst This is he that dieth in his full strength being wholly at ease and quiet 25. I summe up this discourse with an observation that is made concerning the Family of Eli upon which for the remisness of Discipline on the Father's part and for the Impiety and Profaneness of his 〈◊〉 God sent this Curse All the increase of their house shall die in the flower of their age According to that sad malediction it happened for many generations the Heir of the Family died as soon as he begat a Son to succeed him till the Family being wearied by so long a Curse by the counsel of Rabbi Johanan Ben Zachary betook themselves universally to a sedulous and most devout meditation of the Law that is to an exemplar Devotion and strict Religion but then the Curse was turned into a Blessing and the line masculine lived to an honourable old age For the Doctors of the Jews said that God often changes his purposes concerning the death of man when the sick person is liberal in Alms or fervent in Prayer or changes his Name that is gives up his name to God by the serious purposes and religious vows of holy Obedience He that followeth after righteousness Alms it is in the vulgar 〈◊〉 and mercy findeth life that verifies the first and the fervent Prayer of Hezekiah is a great instance of the second and all the 〈◊〉 discourse was intended for probation of the third and proves that no disease is so deadly as a deadly Sin and the ways of Righteousness are therefore advantages of Health and preservatives of Life when health and life are good for us because they are certain title to all God's Promises and Blessings 26. Upon supposition of these premisses I consider there is no cause to wonder that tender persons and the softest women endure the violences of art and Physick sharp pains of Causticks and Cupping-glasses the abscission of the most sensible part for preservation of a mutilous and imperfect body but it is a wonder that when God hath appointed a remedy in Grace apt to preserve Nature and that a dying unto sin should prolong our natural life yet few men are willing to try the experiment they will buy their life upon any conditions in the world but those which are the best and easiest any thing but Religion and Sanctity although for so doing they are promised that immortality shall be added to the end of a long life to make the life of a mortal partake of the eternal duration of an Angel or of God himself 27. Fifthly The last testimony of the Excellency and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ's yoke the fair load of Christianity is the Reasonableness of it and the Unreasonableness of its contrary For whatsoever the wisest men in the world in all Nations and Religions did agree upon as most excellent in it self and of greatest power to make political or future and immaterial felicities all that and much more the Holy Jesus adopted into his Law for they receiving sparks or single irradiations from the regions of light or else having fair tapers shining indeed excellently in representations and expresses of Morality were all involved and swallowed up into the body of light the Sun of Righteousness Christ's Discipline was the breviary of all the Wisdome of the best men and a fair copy and transcript of his Father's Wisdome and there is nothing in the laws of our Religion but what is perfective of our spirits excellent rules of Religion and rare expedients of obeying God by the nearest ways of imitation and such duties which are the proper ways of doing benefits to all capacities and orders of men But I remember my design now is not to represent Christianity to be a better Religion than any other for I speak to Christians amongst whom we presuppose that but I design to invite all Christians in name to be such as they are called upon the interest of such arguments which represent the advantages of Obedience to our Religion as it is commanded us by God And this I shall do yet farther by considering that those Christian names who apprehend Religion as the Fashion of their Countrey and know no other use of a Church but customary or secular and profane that supposing Christian Religion to have come from God as we all profess to believe there are no greater fools in the world than such whose life conforms not to the pretence of their Baptism and Institution They have all the signs and characters of fools and undiscreet unwary persons 28. First Wicked persons like children and fools chuse the present whatsoever it is and neglect the infinite treasures of the future They that have no faith nor foresight have an excuse for snatching at what is now represented because it is that all which can move them but

that there is the same conformity of spirit and fortune by complying with my fortune as if my fortune did comply with my spirit And therefore in the order of Beatitudes Meekness is set between Mourning and Desire that it might balance and attemper those actions by indifferency which by reason of their abode are apt to the transportation of passion The reward expressed is a possission of the earth that is a possession of all which is excellent here below to consign him to a future glory as Canaan was a type of Heaven For Meekness is the best cement and combining of friendships it is a great endearment of us to our company It is an ornament to have a meek and quiet spirit a prevention of quarrels and pacifier of wrath it purchaseth peace and is it self a quietness of spirit it is the greatest affront to all injuries in the world for it returns them upon the injurious and makes them useless ineffective and innocent and is an antidote against all the evil consequents of anger and adversity and tramples upon the usurping passions of the irascible faculty 9. But the greatest part of this Paisage and Landtschap is Sky and as a man in all countreys can see more of Heaven than of the earth he dwells on so also he may in this Promise For although the Christian hears the promise of the inheritance of the Earth yet he must place his eye and fix his heart upon Heaven which by looking downward also upon this Promise as in a vessel of limpid water he may see by reflexion without looking upwards by a direct intuition It is Heaven that is designed by this Promise as well as by any of the rest though this Grace takes in also the refreshments of the earth by equivalence and a suppletory 〈◊〉 But here we have no abiding city and therefore no inheritance this is not our Countrey and therefore here cannot be our portion unless we chuse as did the Prodigal to go into a strange Countrey and spend our portion with riotous and beastly living and forfeit our Father's blessing The Devil carrying our Blessed Saviour to a high mountain shewed him all the Kingdoms of the world but besides that they were offered upon ill conditions they were not eligible by him upon any And neither are they to be chosen by us for our inheritance and portion Evangelical for the Gospel is founded upon better promises and therefore the hopes of a Christian ought not to determine upon any thing less than Heaven Indeed our Blessed Saviour chose to describe this Beatitude in the words of the Psalmist so inviting his Disciples to an excellent precept by the insinuation of those Scriptures which themselves admitted But as the earth which was promised to the meek man in David's Psalm was no other earth but the terra 〈◊〉 the Land of Canaan if we shall remember that this Land of promise was but a transition and an allegory to a greater and more noble that it was but a type of Heaven we shall not see cause to wonder why the Holy Jesus intending Heaven for the reward of this Grace also together with the rest did call it the inheritance of the earth For now is revealed to us a new heaven and a new earth an habitation made without hands 〈◊〉 in the heavens And he understands nothing of the excellency of Christian Religion whose affections dwell below and are satisfied with a portion of dirt and corruption If we be risen with Christ let us seek those things that are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God But if a Christian desires to take possession of this earth in his way as his inheritance or portion he hath reason to fear it will be his All. We have but one inheritance one countrey and here we are strangers and Pilgrims Abraham told Dives that he had enjoyed his good things here he had the inheritance of the earth in the crass material sense and therefore he had no other portion but what the Devils have And when we remember that Persecution is the lot of the Church and that Poverty is her portion and her quantum is but food and raiment at the best and that Patience is her support and Hope her refreshment and Self-denial her security and Meekness is all her possession and title to a subsistence it will appear certain that as Christ's Kingdom was not of this world so neither shall his Saints have their portion in that which is not his Kingdom They are miserable if they do not reign with him and he never reigned here but if we suffer with him we shall also reign with him hereafter True it is Christ promised to him that should lose any interest for his sake the restitution of a hundred fold in this world But as the sense of that cannot be literal for he cannot receive a hundred Mothers or a hundred Wives so whatsoever that be it is to be enjoyed with persecution And then such a portion of the Earth as Christ hath expressed in figure and shall by way of recompence restore us and such a recompence as we can enjoy with Persecution and such an enjoyment as is consistent with our having lost all our temporals and such an acquist and purchace of it as is not destructive of the grace of Meekness all that we may enter into our accounts as part of our lot and the emanation from the holy Promise But in the foot of this account we shall not find any great affluence of temporal accruements However it be although when a meek man hath earthly possessions by this Grace he is taught how to use them and how to part with them yet if he hath them not by the vertue here commanded he is not suffered to use any thing violent towards the acquiring them not so much as a violent passion or a stormy imagination for then he loses his Meekness and what ever he gets can be none of the reward of this Grace He that sights for temporals unless by some other appendent duty he be obliged loses his title by striving incompetently for the reward he cuts off that hand by which alone he can receive it For unless he be indeed meek he hath no right to what he calls the inheritance of the earth and he that is not content to want the inheritance of the earth when God requires him is not meek So that if this Beatitude be understood in a temporal sense it is an offer of a reward upon a condition we shall be without it and be content too For in every sense of the word Meekness implies a just satisfaction of the spirit and acquiescence in every estate or contingency whatsoever though we have no possessions but of a good Conscience no bread but that of carefulness no support but from the Holy Spirit and a providence ministring to our natural necessities by an extemporary provision And certain it is the meekest

with purple and crowned him with thorns and put a cane in his hand for a scepter and bowed their knees before him and saluted him with mockery with a Hail King of the Jews and 〈◊〉 beat him and spate upon him and then Pilate brought him forth and shewed this sad spectacle to the people hoping this might move them to compassion who never loved to see a man prosperous and are always troubled to see the same man in misery But the Earth which was cursed for Adam's sake and was sowed with thorns and thistles produced the full harvest of them and the Second Adam gathered them all and made garlands of them as ensigns of his Victory which he was now in pursuit of against Sin the Grave and Hell And we also may make our thorns which are in themselves 〈◊〉 and dolorous to be a Crown if we bear 〈◊〉 patiently and unite them to Christ's Passion and offer them to his honour and bear them in his cause and rejoyce in them for his sake And indeed after such a grove of 〈◊〉 growing upon the head of our Lord to see one of Christ's members soft delicate and effeminate is a great indecency next to this of seeing the Jews use the King of glory with the greatest reproach and infamy 12. But nothing prevailing nor the Innocence of Jesus nor his immunity from the sentence of Herod nor the industry and diligence of Pilate nor the misery nor the sight of the afflicted Lamb of God at last for so God decreed to permit it and Christ to 〈◊〉 it Pilate gave sentence of death upon him having first washed his hands of which God served his end to declare the Innocence of his Son of which in this whole process he was most curious and suffered not the least probability to adhere to him yet Pilate served no end of his nor preserved any thing of his innocence He that 〈◊〉 upon a Prince and cries Saving your honour you are a Tyrant and he that strikes a man upon the face and cries him mercy and undoes him and says it was in jest does just like that person that sins against God and thinks to be excused by saying it was against his Conscience that is washing our hands when they are stained in bloud as if a ceremony of purification were enough to cleanse a soul from the stains of a spiritual impurity So some refuse not to take any Oath in times of Persecution and say it obliges not because it was forced and done against their wills as if the doing of it were washed off by protesting against it whereas the protesting against it declares me criminal if I rather chuse not death than that which I profess to be a sin But all the persons which cooperated in this death were in this life consigned to a fearful judgment after it The Jews took the bloud which Pilate seemed to wash off upon themselves and their children and the bloud of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead and marked them not to escape but to fall under the sword of the destroying Angel and they perished either by a more hasty death or shortly after in the extirpation and miserable ruine of their Nation And Pilate who had a less share in the crime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a black character of a secular Judgment for not long after he was by Vitellius the President of Syria sent to Rome to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews whom to please he had done so much violence to his Conscience and by 〈◊〉 sentence he was banished to Vienna deprived of all his honours where he lived ingloriously till by impatience of his calamity he killed himself with his own hand And thus the bloud of Jesus shed for the Salvation of the world became to them a Curse and that which purifies the Saints stuck to them that shed it and mingled it not with the tears of Repentance to be a leprosie loathsome and incurable So Manna turns to worms and the wine of Angels to Vineger and Lees when it is received into impure vessels or tasted by wanton palats and the Sun himself produces Rats and Serpents when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus The PRAYER O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God who wert pleased to 〈◊〉 shame and sorrow to be brought before tribunals to be accused maliciously betrayed treacherously condemned unjustly and scourged most 〈◊〉 suffering the most severe and most unhandsome inflictions which could be procured by potent subtle and extremest malice and didst 〈◊〉 this out of love greater than the love of Mothers more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropt from the eyes of most passionate women by these fontinels of bloud issuing forth life and health and pardon upon all thine enemies teach me to apprehend the baseness of Sin in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to susfer that I may hate the cause of thy 〈◊〉 and adore thy mercy and imitate thy charity and copy 〈◊〉 thy patience ànd humility and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections Lord what am I that the eternal Son of God should 〈◊〉 one stripe for me But thy Love is infinite and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy and despise so miraculous a goodness and to do fresh despite to the Son of God But our sins are innumerable and our infirmities are mighty Dearest Jesu pity me for I am accused by my own Conscience and am found guilty I am stripped naked of my Innocence and bound fast by Lust and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged Appetites But let thy Innocence excuse me the robes of thy Righteousness cloath me thy Bondage set me free and thy Stripes heal me that thou being my Advocate my Physician my Patron and my Lord I may be adopted into the union of thy Merits and partake of the efficacy of thy Sufferings and be crowned as thou art having my sins changed to vertues and my thorns to rays of glory under thee our Head in the participations of Eternity O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God Amen DISCOURSE XX. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it 1. THE Holy Spirit of God hath in Scripture revealed to us but one way of preparing to Death and that is by a holy life and there is nothing in all the Book of Life concerning this exercise of address to Death but such advices which suppose the dying person in a state of Grace S. James indeed counsels that in sickness we should send for the Ministers Ecclesiastical and that they pray over us and that we confess our sins and they shall be forgiven that is those prayers are of great efficacy for the removing the sickness and taking off that punishment of sin and healing them in a certain degree according to the efficacy of the ministery and the dispositions or capacities of the sick person But

were heaped upon him and both he and his company furnished with provisions necessary for the rest of their Voyage Nay Publius himself is said by some to have been hereby converted to the Faith and by S. Paul to have been constituted Bishop of the Island and that this was he that succeeded S. Denys the Areopagite in the See of Athens and was afterwards crowned with Martyrdom 9. AFTER three Months stay in this Island they went a-board the Castor and Pollux a Ship of Alexandria bound for Italy At Syracuse they put in and staid three Days thence sailed to Rhegium and so to Puteoli where they landed and finding some Christians there staid a week with them and then set forward in their Journey to Rome The Christians at Rome having heard of their arrival several of them came part of the way to meet them some as far as the Three Taverns a place thirty three Miles from Rome others as far as Appii Forum fifty one Miles distant thence Great was their mutual salutation and the encouragement which the Apostle received by it glad no doubt to see that Christians found so much liberty at Rome By them he was conducted in a kind of triumph into the City where when they were arrived the rest of the Prisoners were delivered over to the Captain of the Guard and by him disposed in the common Gaol while S. Paul probably at Julius his request and recommendation was permitted to stay in a private House only with a Souldier to secure and guard him SECT VII S. Paul's Acts from his coming to Rome till his Martyrdom S. Paul's summoning the chief of the Jews at Rome and his discourse to them Their resractoriness and infidelity His first hearing before Nero. The success of his Preaching Poppaea Sabina Nero's Concubine one of his Converts Tacitus his character of her Onesimus converted by S. Paul at Rome and sent back with an Epistle to Philemon his Master The great obligation which Christianity lays upon Servants to diligence and sidelity in their duty The rigorous and arbitrary power of Masters over Servants by the Roman Laws This mitigated by the Laws of the Gospel S. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians upon what occasion sent His Epistle to the Ephesians and another to the Colossians His second Epistle to Timothy written probably at his first being at Rome The Epistle to the Hebrews by whom written and in what Language The aim and design of it S. Paul's Preaching the Gospel in the West and in what parts of it His return to Rome when His imprisonment under Nero and why His being beheaded Milk instead of blood said to flow from his body Different Accounts of the time of his suffering His burial where and the great Church erected to his memory 1. THE first thing S. Paul did after he came to Rome was to summon the Heads of the Jewish Consistory there whom he acquainted with the cause and manner of his coming that though he had been guilty of no violation of the Law of their Religion yet had he been delivered by the Jews into the hands of the Roman Governours who would have acquitted him once and again as innocent of any capital offence but by the perversness of the Jews he was forced not with an intention to charge his own Nation already sufficiently odious to the Romans but only to vindicate and clear himself to make his Appeal to Caesar that being come he had sent for them to let them know that it was for his constant asserting the Resurrection the hope of all true 〈◊〉 that he was bound with that Chain which they saw upon him The Jews replied that they had received no advice concerning him nor had any of the Nation that came from Judaea brought any Charge against him only for the Religion which he had espoused they desired to be a little better informed about it it being every where decried both by Jew and Gentile Accordingly upon a day appointed he discoursed to them from morning to night concerning the Religion and Doctrine of the holy Jesus proving from the promises and predictions of the Old Testament that he was the true Messiah His discourse succeeded not with all alike some being convinced others persisted in their infidelity And as they were departing in some discontent at each other the Apostle told them it was now too plain God had accomplished upon them the prophetical curse of being left to their own wilful hardness and impenitency to be blind at noon-day and to run themselves against all means and methods into irrecoverable ruine That since the case was thus with them they must expect that henceforth he should turn his preaching to the Gentiles who would be most ready to entertain what they had so scornfully rejected the glad tidings of the Gospel 2. IT was not probably long after this that he was brought to his first hearing before the Emperor where those friends whom he most expected should stand by him plainly deserted him afraid it seems of appearing in so ticklish a cause before so unreasonable a Judge who governed himself by no other measures than the brutish and extravagant pleasure of his lust or humour But God stood by him and encouraged him as indeed Divine consolations are many times then nearest to us when humane assistances are farthest from us This cowardise of theirs the Apostle had a charity large enough to cover heartily praying that it might not be brought in against them in the Accounts of the great Day Two years he dwelt at Rome in an house which he hired for his own use wherein he constantly imployed himself in preaching and writing for the good of the Church He preached daily without interruption to all that came to him and with good success yea even upon some of the better rank and quality and those belonging to the Court it self Among which the Roman Martyrologie reckons Torpes an Officer of prime note in Nero's Palace and afterwards a Martyr for the Faith and Chrysostom if Baronius cite him right tells us of Nero's Cup-bearer and one of his Concubines supposed by some to have been Poppaea Sabina of whom Tacitus gives this character that she wanted nothing to render her one of the most accomplished Ladies in the World but a chast and a vertuous mind And I know not how far it may seem to countenance her conversion at least inclination to a better Religion than that of Paganism that Josephus styles her a pious woman and tells us that she effectually solicited the cause of the Jews with her Husband Nero and what favours Josephus himself received from her at Rome he relates in his own life 3. AMONGST others of our Apostle's Converts at Rome was Onesimus who had formerly been servant to Philemon a person of eminency in Colosse but had run away from his Master and taken things of some value with him Having rambled as far as Rome he was now converted by S.