Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	apostle_n	sin_n	word_n	4,593	5	4.4164	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65564	Two discourses for the furtherance of Christian piety and devotion the former asserting the necessity and reasonableness of a positive worship, and particularly of the Christian : the later considering the common hinderances of devotion and the divine worship, with their respective remedies / by the author of The method of private devotion.	Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713.	1671 (1671)	Wing W1522; ESTC R38254	87,149	410

I sum up the evidence from this part of the History of Christianity And that is that Moses his law most plainly and by frequently repeated means foretells that the way for the expiation of sins must be by a bloudy sacrifice and the Prophets yet more expresly that it should be the Messiah who should make his Soul an offering for sin which thing is the principal Dogma of Christianity that by the Death of Christ all who believe obtain remissions of sins In sum then we see many hundred of years before the planting of Christian Religion by Christ and his Apostles was it represented in types and figures foretold as to some of the principal points of it in express words Christ himself described the time place and manner of his Birth specified the term of his life the manner and design of his death determined and lastly the consequents no less plainly set down All which as they could never have been done without divine inspiration or revelation so could they have no other design but to prepare the world for the belief of what in time was to be further revealed as the truth and will of God For that God should predict things for truth and by real effects according to the time foretold verify those predictions to the end a Religion not framed by him might be believed as delivered from him is not consistent with his justice and veracity Sect. 4 We proceed to the History of Christian Religion in and under its plantation by Christ himself and his first emissaries or Apostles And here we say there are so many things recorded touching him and them whose transmission to posterity under those eminent notorieties by which they have ever descended placeth them beyond all shadow of uncertainty as will abundantly suffice to evince the Divine Original of Christian Religion First It cannot be denied Debentur haec plurimum autori Anonymo in libro de Autorit S. Scripturae ca. 7. by any person except such who resolve to believe nothing but what they see a temper so unreasonable as would soon destroy humane Society that such a person as Jesus Christ did live and that he pretended himself to be sent from Heaven to instruct men what was the will of Heaven and in pursuance hereof partly vindicated a mistaken doctrine then in the World that of the Jewish morality and partly taught and promulged a new one of his own which is the Christian doctrine If any person should be so extravagant as to deny any thing hereof he will presently be convinced by temples and oratories soon erected to his worship and dedicated to his name by vast multitudes of men which even in heathen story he reads presently to have embraced his doctrine and died in the most cruel sort for its witness besides many Authours attest as much as we have yet said of him It cannot secondly be denied that the Country-men of this Jesus men most stubbornly tenacious of their Customs and zealous of the traditions of their Fathers enraged against him for his pretending power to alter their Customs and introduce a new Religion accused him of sedition and blasphemy and never desisted persecuting and impugning him till for these imputed crimes they had procured his crucifixion The primitive Christians so much glorying in and reverencing the Cross the Banners Statues and other representations thereof on a sudden so frequent in the Christian World besides the testimonies of Heathen Books and of some eminent Authours of their very own Nation speak as much Nay their posterity still in being acknowledge their Forefathers to have contrived and effected this matter and their City and Temple soon after destroyed their Nation dispersed insomuch that now the being of the far greater part of it is not by themselves known And themselves as their progenitours ever since wander and sojorn in the Countryes of Aliens despised hated scarce tolerated to live All which calamities though they are willing to refer to other feigned and imaginary causes it is certain their old and as they confess and we have seen undoubted records did foretell should befall them for their rejecting and putting to death of the Messiah All these evidences are plain matter of fact and so render that for which they are alledged undeniable Thirdly It is no less certain that not only Christ himself but other persons whom in his life time he instructed as Disciples and after his death commissioned as Apostles taught and promulged the doctrine called Christian and in the end most of them died for the testimony thereof both he and they having before in their life time wrought many strange things deservedly accounted miracles and exertions of a divine power to attest a divine truth Besides that we have the names of all the Apostles frequent in our sacred records which no one in this point will suspect of falsity we find the names of some of them even in Heathen Monuments the Sepulchres of some of them are to be seen at this day at least every where throughout the Christian World goodly fabricks and Temples dedicated to their memory Then as to their and their Lords miracles some of them are recorded by Heathen Writers others by Jewish both profest enemies to Christianity and they are generally confest in the writings of the most early adversaries of Christianity who by the way had best means by examining particular circumstances as of places where they were done c. to find out their truth or convict their falsity Those adversaries going about to assign other causes of them as it is a kind of confession of the matter of fact so if lookt into ingenders stronger belief that they were wrought by divine power Who can think all done by the power of Magick which the Religion by these miracles asserted destroyed And what more ridiculous than that the Cabalistical interpretation of a name should prove a charm able to effect miracles in so great number and variety These things then being thus certain to proceed we say Fourthly None will deny that the Apostles of Christ preached unto the World that their Lord after his ignominious and most direful death rose again and conversed with them several times Our records expresly tell us that they did thus preach and make the being a witness of the resurrection an essential part of being an Apostle nor is there any reason why we should doubt but they did assert what we are there told they did Now it cannot be thought they should have persisted even to death publishing and witnessing thus much except it had been really true that they had seen and conversed with him according as they affirmed The very talking of a resurrection as we read made them ridiculous even in the judgment of Philosophers It incensed against them both Jew and Heathen who for this reason amongst others imprisoned buffeted scourged and by all means tormented and persecuted them to death This their experience told them to be the great

reception which their witness in most places would find All the profit pleasure reputation then which they could forecast to themselves was a complication of troubles torments and death being laught at by wise and foolish in a word the want of all things but miseries And who would go about with a devised ly on such terms The very story it self suffers us not to believe them abused that they should a considerable time behold him discourse with him eat and drink with him handle his body and this several times done and by several persons by the eleven Disciples altogether by above five hundred at once is not consistent with the nature of a delusory Phantome That they should be besides themselves is as incredible all their other actions speak them not only discreet but virtuous And do mad men go about working miracles and succeed in the perswadeing the practice of their own madness to the wisest and greatest of their Spectatours and hearers It remains then that they testified what they knew to be true that they had seen and spoke with their risen Lord and consequently that Christ did indeed rise from the dead as he had promised than which there cannot be a greater testimony from any matter of fact of the truth of that Religion he planted For that Christ should preach a new Religion that he should affirm it was from Heaven that he should work miracles to prove it so that he should witness it to death and by death yet foretelling to the World death should not be able to hold him that he should accordingly at the time foretold arise again and shew himself that he should take witness hereof so publickly that he should send others to preach what he had done and confirm all by their miracles as he said greater than himself had wrought all which things descend to us by such notorious evidence that we cannot with any reason disbelieve any one point of them that I say all these should be and yet all a cheat no one can think who thinks not God and providence such also which thought cannot be supposed incident the blackest Devil Now then it only remains to consider the History of Christian Religion its state and progress since the departure of these great founders and witnesses of it And here we shall take notice only of two considerables both of them of undeniable truth First That it is reported and believed throughout all the Christian World that the above mentioned Disciples of our Saviour did not only by word of mouth preach and witness the Christian Doctrine but some of them consign it in Books which Books are constantly reported to have been received as the genuine works of their reputed Authors in the first and next Ages to them who had the best opportunities of examining them and in all Ages since succeeding And we find by those numerous Doctours who have written of those Books that they have been in all Ages most religiously kept and are the same for substance now as ever and finally that all in all Ages who professed to believe Christianity except some vitious lewd persons who would be denominated from that name but cast off the thing have appealed to these Books as the records of their Faith and so still doth the present Christian Age. If this Religion then ever were true we cannot considering the premises but believe it is still true for the present Christianity is consonant to the records of the old and those records still the same for substance as ever Lastly Let us consider how innumerable the Proselytes of Christiany for this sixteen hundred and odd years have been and how vastly numerous they still are It is undeniable that Christian Religion hath travelled through most or all the known and habited World Every Country sheweth Monuments of it Yea there hath been a new Religion partly made out of it which now is received in a very considerable part of the World I mean Mahumetanism In all these Countries it hath been received by men of all Ages Sexes and conditions poor and rich mighty and mean learned and unlearned It hath made virtuous of the most vitious persons magnanimous even to the contempt of death and rejoicing in it and all its pomps and precedaneous torments of the weakest minds such as those of Women and Children And yet in the mean time nothing so unlikely to have taken as this As to the substance of its more peculiar precepts they are such as thwart all carnal and secular interests They enjoin under the pain of eternal torment and misery the renouncing all that can be dear to man Father Mother Wife Children Brothers Country Estate Honour Pleasure Health in a word life it self in case any or all of them come in competition with Faith or Virtue That is if I must deny Christ or commit any other sin or else not live or not enjoy any thing I count pretious I am enjoined by the Christian law as I would not be damned to quit whatsoever it is I can loose rather than mine integrity Then as to the persons who were sent about with this ungrateful errand our records tell us they were at first a parcel of stupid pusillanimous unlettered mechanick and contemptible men yea after they had been ennobled by their errand and received all the advance and improvement of their minds which inspiration gave them in those very Books which some of them have writ as we believe by inspiration they have left footsteps and evidences of their unskillfullness in humane literature Finally the opposition which this unlikely Doctrine propagated by assertours so unlikely to succeed did at first and during the time of its more considerable propagation receive was such as makes it clearly a miracle that both Doctrine and Doctors were not long ago extinct and darkness and oblivion have dwelt so much as upon the very names of both Jew and Heathan Greek and Barbarian every where making it their business to suppress them as early as might be and before they grew too publick Notwithstanding all which maugre all force and craft this Doctrine run over the World as our Lord foretold it should like lightening without any violence saving what it suffered it succeeded every where The extinguishing its witnesses disseminated and confirm'd it insomuch that it fill'd City and Country Camp and Court and it soon became in a manner as impossible to pitch a mans abode out of the World as out of the Church All which being duly weighed no rational and considerative person can impute this success to any thing but a divine power defending and perswading what it had revealed I do profess this very one thing seems to me sufficient to convince any unbiassed person that Christianity could have no other Authour but the supreme God And that ancient famous Italian Poet had great reason to sing as he doth when bringing in St. Peter Catechizing him touching the reason of his belief of those miracles by