Selected quad for the lemma: city_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
city_n	account_n	world_n	zion_n	30	3	10.4918	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51515	The mount of spirits that glorious and honorable state to which believers are called by the Gospel explained in some meditations upon the 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 verses of the 12th chapter to the Hebrews : with some previous reflections upon that whole Epistle and the people of the Jews.	Wolseley, Charles, Sir, 1630?-1714.	1691 (1691)	Wing M2970; ESTC R32126	106,065	208

them they are come to is to Mount Sion of which for the clearer comprehension of the Apostles meaning by it some things may be particularly considered of that Mount as it stood circumstanced under the Law and this in especial that the great Honour that is put upon it in Scripture is principally with respect to the Temple that then stood upon the top of it and which was meant and signified by it this was the place whither all the Males were to come three times a Year and the solemn part of all the Jewish Worship could be no where else performed and their private Worship where ever they were at home or abroad upon Solomon's request to God at the first dedication of it was generally directed towards this place This we may see in the case of Jonah who in the Whale's Belly thought of directing his Prayer towards this Holy Temple and the Prophet Daniel when it was pulled down and lay in Rubbish prayed even then towards it three times a day as we see in the 6th of Daniel This Temple placed upon Mount Sion was the only sanctified House where the mighty God was pleased to take up his dwelling since the World began the Tabernacle was small and ambulatory and but preparative to this glorious sanctified solemn Fabrick the City of Jerusalem and the Land of Canaan were only holy relatively and upon collateral accounts the City with reference to the Temple the place of God's residence but the Temple was inherently Holy made so by God's own dedication and descent into it at the first this was the place where day and night God was served without ceasing according to his own ordination and therefore he is said to love it above all the dwelling places of Jacob. Here the long expected Messiah the Son of God Christ himself was brought and all that the Law required performed about ●im in this Sacred House But sure we are the Apostle intended nothing literal about this Mount his drift is wholly spiritual and therefore having premised thus much of the literal typical State of this Mount we must now examine what it means in this place and as it lyes in the comparison and the sense intended seems very obvious by Mount Sion the heavenly Jerusalem and the City of the living God the same thing is intended and this is the meaning ye are come to all that was typified by them and all that was promised on the Churches behalf to them to every Promise made to the Church under those denominations which is no other but the Gospel-state and the blessed Priviledges and Administrations thereof in its fulness and glory the Apostle declares the meaning of these places to be spiritual and neither of private interpretation nor literal signification that the Jews might cease doting upon them in that low and mean sense and might be convinced that the Gospel vertually contains all that was excellent in them Mount Sion as was before said had its value from the Temple that stood upon it and therefore when the Gospel is prophesied of by it 't is said the mountain of the Lord's house shall be exalted on the top of the mountains Now instead of this material Temple every Christian under the Gospel is himself a living Temple of the Holy Ghost a Temple wherein God dwells and all spiritual Worship and Service is continually offered up and the whole Church is one intire living Temple wherein God is always spiritually served so 't is expressed in the 2d of Ephes Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the houshold of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord And he that is arrived at this true Gospel-state and all the glorious Enjoyments of it to have access to the Father through the Son by that one Spirit he is come to the true Mount Sion and the real Temple where God will dwell for ever he abides in the nearest access to God he is capable of and in all those holy and sanctified Qualifications which the Temple signified as it was then the Seat and Center of all the true Worship of God The second thing the Apostle tells the Jews they are come to is the heavenly Jerusalem the City of the living God and although the signification of this is the same with Mount Sion yet it is greatly farthering to the Apostle's design the mention of it that so the Jews might think nothing valuable amongst them was lost but all to be found with great advantage in the profession of the Gospel the whole Religion of that National Church of the Jews being contained in this City and therein vertually comprised the whole state of the Gospel The Catholick Church with great reason and signification under the Gospel every where spread and under no confinement is stiled a City and is called Jerusalem a vast difference there was between coming to that dreadful barren Mount Sinai in the Wilderness of Horeb and the City of the living God Several things are considerable in this City to heighten the comparison taking it to be made either with Mount Sinai or Jerusalem literal 1st The Noble and Honourable Government of this City 'T is governed by the great Charter of the Gospel none have any Rule but the living God himself no Laws are in force here but what come from Christ's own Mouth the Gospel Church is built up and managed as the Temple was which was the soul and glory of this City in every particular by God's own punctual direction and there is his delight there his Soul rests where he is served by Laws of his own composing and enacting 2dly This City is a place of invincible strength and security the Jews knew to their cost the earthly Jerusalem was not so here 's the Mount Sion that cannot be moved the Gates of Hell can never prevail against it 't is sure to remain against all opposition till it be safely taken up into Heaven from whence it came 3dly The Inhabitants of it are all united 't is a City compact together not with carnal and earthly but spiritual Ligaments there is such an union in it as God has chosen and takes pleasure in amidst great variety they have but one Head they all minister under him as fellow-citizens for the good of each other they are all guided and animated by one Spirit and they all tend to one and the same end 4thly 'T is a City of wonderful Beauty the City of the great King the Palace of the living and eternal God as the Psalmist says comprehensively and prophetically of it under the name of Sion Beautiful for scituation is mount Sion the joy of the whole earth this Beauty lyes in the Presence of God and in its Sanctity and in that Image and Superscription of God that it

and that in several things 1st In the continuance and time of its duration 1260 Years being near about the time that the Babylonian Monarchy lasted 2dly In respect that all the holy and sanctified Utensils of the Temple were captived in Babylon and there prophaned as all the Sacred Institutions of the Gospel are captived and prophaned in this Mystical Babylon how shamefully have the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper and the other Holy Institutions and Ordinances of the New Testament been prophan'd and abus'd under the Papal Reign 3dly This Ecclesiastical Mornarchy is set forth and described by that of the Babylonian after a very peculiar manner in respect of the sore Persecutions the Church meets with under both the Holy Ghost makes the one typical and representative of the other 4thly The Babylonian Monarchy was not ruined by a common Providence but by peculiar and extraordinary Judgments they are three times in one Chapter called the Vengeance of his Temple And so shall this Papal Babylonian State be ruined after a peculiar manner by the brightness of Christ's coming and by the glory of his Power 5thly And that which I think the principal Reason why the Holy Ghost brands this Ecclesiastical Monarchy with the Name of Babylon though it arose out of the Ruins of the Roman Monarchy and have its situation at Rome is this to keep up and maintain the Harmony and due decorum of the Visions set forth in the Revelation and the Representations and Expressions thereof Now it is plain that in the Revelation the true Church is represented under the Gospel by Jewish Similitudes and Expressions and the Enemies of it are represented in the Names of those great Enemies the Jews had to their Church and State The three most remarkable Calamities that befel the Jews was first in Egypt secondly in Babylon and thirdly from the Outrages of Antiochus and upon that account we find Egypt often mentioned in the Revelations and the sore Bondage and Persecutions of the Church reckoned from thence and in regard the Jewish Church and State with their City and Temple were totally ruined and themselves captivated by the Monarchy of Babylon their constant and avowed Enemy therefore the grand Enemy of Christ and the Gospel the Antichristian State is called Babylon and perhaps the Persecutions and Desolations of Antiochus are represented by God and Magog when Satan shall be let loose This Ecclesiastical Structure is also in Scripture stiled Antichristian and the Monarchy of it Antichrist and that not only for the general opposition it makes and the tendency it has against Christ and his Interest but for this peculiar reason because there is a Vice Head and a Vice Christ and so a False Christ set up in the Church Christ's Place is by this Monarchy notoriously usurped it being enthroned by its Head the Man of Sin in the Temple of God as God and most impiously and impudently personating Christ in all his mediatory Authority Satan and the rest of his Associates having thus from the beginning declared their enmity to God and peculiarly to the Seed of the Woman and the Interest and Kingdom of Christ as Mediator and pursued it in all Ages with the greatest Rage and Malice imaginable and having in the Antichristian Reign for 1260 Years which began at the fall of the Roman Empire for the Beast and the ten Kings which are the shivers of that Empire are expresly said to take their Power in one hour and St. Paul tells us he that does let will let till he be taken out of the way which is to tell us in other words that till the Temporal Monarchy of Rome fell the Spiritual Monarchy could not be erected I say having brought their Apostate Practices and Principles to the utmost culmen and heighth they could arrive at they will then grow ripe for destruction the Judge will appear to stand at the door Christ will bring these lapsed Angels and their Associates to their final doom and destroy them and all their contrivances by the spirit of his mouth and the brightness of his coming he will at last come to judgment with all his Holy Angels and according to that ancient Prophesie of Enoch with all his Saints he will come first in his Father's glory to manifest before all that he and the Father are one and that the essential glory of God is his 2dly In his own glory the glory of his mediatory Kingdom having by his Humiliation Suffering Death and Resurrection conquered the Grave Death Hell Sin and all the Effects of it and acquited a peculiar glory to himself thereby And 3dly In the glory of the Angels who are all his Attendants not only in the glory they received from him in their first creation but the glory they have acquired through him in keeping their first state and the glory of all their faithful service and conformity to him and his Kingdom to the end and this honor will all the Saints then have not only to appear with him in glory but to sit in judgment with him as his mystical body and as part of the reward of their works that follow them and joyn in the Sentence pronounced by him The first Sentence he pronounceth will probably be upon these apostate Spirits who were the first created Rebels and them he will doom to eternal darkness and misery and so these Angels that could not content themselves with the glory they had in their first creation from the second Person as God come to be fatally sentenced by him for their aspiring Impieties as he is Man as they were made by him so were they made for him to come under his mediatory Authority and be finally disposed by him and with this tormenting aggravation that he is accompanied and glorified therein by the blessed Angels whose company they forsook and in opposition to whom they have all along carried on a distinct interest and by all the Saints the whole body of the Church which they have so malign'd and persecuted since the World began So let all thine Enemies perish O Lord then will it be said the Mystery of God is finished the Spirits Influences compleated the Mediator's Kingdom perfected and delivered up the Wicked are gone to their own place the Saints are all come safe home to their Father's House and rest for ever God is all in all Amen Hallelujah Touching the other part of the Angels those that kept their first state of whom the Scripture makes such honourable mention as sometimes to call them Morning stars sometimes Sons of God Angels of Light Chariots of God his Hoasts his Ministers the Elect Angels who with respect to their Nature are called Spirits with respect to their Dignity Thrones Dominions Principalities and Powers and with respect to their Office and Employment Angels and ministring Spirits for Angel is a word relates to their Employment and not to their Nature and we find Men sometimes in Scripture by vertue of their Offices

comes to no more then arguing from a bare possibility against a plain matter of fact to the contrary The prophesies and promises that concern the Restoration and Conversion of the Jews are not to be reckoned as fulfilled and accomplished from any possibilities or probabilities that they might be so in any age that were to trifle with God's veracity but from an actual specifical execution and performance The ten Tribes I acknowledge were within the Dominions of Cyrus and by that decree might have returned but 't is certain in fact the Body of them did not and that is easily supposed in the general because we find those that had been but a few Years setled in Babylon were loath to return and much more might the ten Tribes that were at so great a distance and when the two Tribes came out of Babylon had been setled in those remote parts very near two hundred Years and all those dead long before that knew the Country and had been personally removed from thence and that they did not return is possitively proved from Ezra 2. v. 1. And from Neh. 7. and the 6th Verse where 't is expresly said those Jews that returned into Palestine were those that had been carried away by Nebuchadnezzar and we are further assured they consisted only of the two Tribes because they took account of them and registred them by their Genealogies and Families and so they were returned every one to their own City and 't is said they came to Judah every one to their own City Esdras was one of them that returned out of Babylon and by his second Book it plainly appears so far as his Authority goes that they reckoned the ten Tribes to remain then in their captivity and shews how they had setled themselves there and those that then lived must needs know that matter True it is that from the Decree in the first Year of Cyrus to the sixth Year of Darius Nothus when the Temple was finished was 46 Years so long was it e're the Temple was compleated reckoning besides the times of its actual building those of the stops and intervals that interposed and to that the Jews relate when they told our Saviour Forty six Years was this Temple in building during which time some few scattered Jews belonging to the ten Tribes that had fled upon Shalmaneser's conquest into the adjacent parts returned into Palestine but it does not appear that they were of any other Tribes but those of Ephraim and Manasseh but this was so inconsiderable a thing in respect of the return of the whole ten Tribes that in Ezra and Nehemiah no notice at all is taken of it and the building of the City and the Temple and re-peopling the Country is wholly ascribed to the two Tribes that went out of Babylon Now no Man can think if he would that if that vast body of the ten Tribes had been then restored but that they would have had a great hand in resetling that Country and eminent mention would have been made by the Holy Ghost of it So that 't is plain the body of the ten Tribes setled by Shalmaneser by the River Gozan and in the Cities of the Medes came not back upon Cyrus his Decree but in the wise and secret Providence of God were reserved for a more glorious Restoration which is yet to come From the rebuilding the Temple till our Saviour's time there is not the least intimation in any story of the return of the ten Tribes In Ahasuerus's time they were dispers'd all over the Persian Empire that is plain from what Haman said to King Ahasuerus in the third of Esther There is a certain people speaking of the Jews scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom And I think 't is utterly impossible to find any Call or Conversion of them to this day such as is prophesied of and St. Paul tells us of such a body as those Ten Tribes must needs consist of could be never called or restored without filling the World with a very great Story since our Saviour's time we hear of nothing but Judgments upon that People of their Slaughter and Ruine by Titus Trajan Adrian and other Emperors but not a word of any Restoration or general Conversion of the body of the ten Tribes that were carried so far eastward some speak much of the flourishing of the Christian Religion in Judea and about Jerusalem in and after Constantine's time but that did not arise what ever it was from the number of Christian Jews there so much as from the great conflux of other Christians that came from all Parts and many of them setled their Dwellings there with respect to the holy Sepulchre and the City and Country where our Saviour had lived and wrought all his Miracles The ten Tribes as to any knowledge we have of them are certainly the bulk and body of them lost he that will deny it is obliged to prove what is become of them and where they be but 't is no good Argument to infer from thence that either they are totally finally and really lost or shall never be recalled 't is out of the compass of all rational conception to think such a vast number of People should be wholly extinct and not propagate Posterity no instance can be given of any such thing but their being does not at all depend upon our knowledge of their being they may exist in many parts of the World and we not know it and so may be lost as to us though not in themselves 't would be no good way of arguing to deny the existence of all parts of the World and all Inhabitants of it that are not to us particularly known and discovered And as to their Calling it is a very potent Argument to me they shall be called because they are at the present in such a lost unknown state for the Prophets and especially Isaiah do in many places intimate that their condition by the ordination of God should be such that they should seem as utterly lost and past all hope of recovery so Sion is introduced speaking Who hath begotten me these seeing I have lost my children The Prophet Zachariah seems to point at their wonderful recovery in that expression I will remove the iniquity of the land in one day and also the Prophet Isaiah when he says Who hath heard such a thing who hath seen such things shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day or shall a nation be born at once for as soon as Sion travelled she brought forth her children And the whole Scripture seems to design it as a most glorious Work of God's Power wherein he would eminently appear to call home those his ancient People out of a most forlorn seemingly lost and desperate condition and Saine Paul himself who best understood this matter calls their recovery and restoration in the 11th of the Romans which as he says there was

best Man upon Earth could not stand before God under that dispensation which addition to the story God for some especial ends we may be assured gave to the Apostle by Revelation there being no such thing recorded by Moses himself In the 22th Verse the Apostle comes to the second Part of the comparison the affirmitive Part shewing what it is that the believing Jews when they embraced Christianity came to but ye are come to mount Sion 1st This in general is to instruct the converted Jews that by the Gospel they are come to and embodyed with the true Catholick Church called in scripture the fulness of him that filleth all things of which the National Church of the Jews was but a Type and a Figure 2dly That this true Catholick Church is partly in Heaven and partly on Earth And 3dly The Apostle by intermixing these parts together in his account of them gives them to understand that they are all of one piece and together make but one Church and one Body under one Head things in Heaven and things on Earth being united in Christ as their common head and by telling them they are come they are come to this Catholick Church the Apostle signifies this unto them that as their Fathers after several Days Travel upon their coming out of Egypt and by great and solemn preparations came at last to Mount Sinai so they and their Fathers having travelled through the former dispensation which was the great preparative to this they are now safely arrived hither and are come to all the Glories and Priviledges of the Gospel they are come in respect of Relation and Communion to all that part of the Church that is in Heaven and to all the true and real parts of it upon Earth not now confin'd to any National Constitution whatever and this is the best state and utmost that we can attain to in this World The Apostles drift here is not at all to describe the Church Triumphant but the Militant Church the force of this Discourse lies in preferring the state of the Gospel Church here upon Earth beyond and before that of the legal and judicial Church and the Apostle chooseth to represent them both by two Mounts one where the Law was given which was the greatest thing belonged to the Judaical oeconomy and the other from whence the Gospel first issued If you ask why the Apostle represents the Gospel state by Mount Sion and Jerusalem that were places proper and peculiar to the Jews there are several accounts may be given of it 1st Because those places had Spiritual and Gospel significations even as the Jews enjoy'd them and so the Apostle represents by them the better to engage the Jews what they truly and really signified and speaks of them in their own native and proper representation Mount Sion consisted of two parts on the highest part the Temple was built and on the other the Palace of their Kings so that this Mount was typically comprehensive of their Civil and Ecclesiastical state 2dly The Gospel first issued from thence and it was prophesied that so it should do Esau 2.3 out of Sion shall go forth the Law speaking of the Gospel and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem And the same Prophet tells us the deliverer shall come out of Sion and upon that account in Psal 133. God is said from Mount Sion to command the blessing even life for evermore the meaning is Christ himself came into the Temple upon Mount Sion in Jerusalem and from thence in person issued out the Proclamation of the Gospel and therefore the Apostle keeps up the Honour of this Mount and this City because it had ever been by right and designation the seat of the true Worship of the only true God in opposition to all Idolatry and upon that account called the City of the Living God and in regard of the most glorious Types and Prefigurations were therein included and at last therein appeared the great end and substance of them all the glorious Person of God-Man of Christ himself it seems in a sort necessary if the Church were denominated by any one place it should be from this as being comprehensive of the whole Church and State of the Jews and the very center of it the Catholick Church under the Gospel being under confinement to no one place more then another no one place could so give a denomination to it as it might do to a National Church and therefore this place is made choice of by the Holy Ghost and being comprehensive of all God's sacred institutions of old of the Jewish Church Litterally and the Gospel Church Spiritually The Catholick Church universally thereupon is denominated from it and by it to the end of the World To which we may add in the Third place That since all the promises in the Old Testament that are made to the Gospel Church to the end of the World are made to it under those names of Sion and Jerusalem that therefore it seems necessary to keep up those names as it hath pleased the Holy Ghost to do to the end of the World to shew the punctual fulfilling of those promises in all Ages What Mount Sion and Jerusalem signified will not be compleated till the Consummation of all things upon which account God was said to take up his rest and dwell there for ever Nothing therefore seems so proper so decent and fit as to denominate the Gospel-Church by those terms and as it was in the Apostles times a great help to them to find out what Christ was to do and suffer by what was signified and typified of him under the Law so it will be to the very end of the World a marvellous help to the Church to understand the glorious methods of his Kingdom and Government by looking back and seeing how it was set forth in the prefigurations of it that belonged to Jerusalem and Mount Sion It pleaseth the Holy Ghost throughout the whole Scripture most frequently to represent the Gospel in Judaical Types and Phrases and two reasons we may probably suppose for it 1st To shew what an exact Agreement and Harmony there is in all God's Dispensations how every shadow truly represented the substance and every counter-part punctually agrees with the original And 2dly As a means to promote the conversion of the Jews in the latter times when they shall lay to heart and consider that all their own Religion expressed in their own Language is truly and fully to be found in the Christian Religion that the Law therein is exactly conster'd into the Gospel and every particular thing they most valued they shall here find by name expressed and fully to be enjoyed in the substance and perfection of it But for the more punctual and exact discovery of the Apostles sense in these Verses it will be needful to consider the particulars to which he tells the believing Jews they were come severally and distinctly The First thing he tells