Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	body_n	everlasting_a	life_n	5,649	5	4.7198	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30328	A collection of eighteen papers relating to the affairs of church & state during the reign of King James the Second (seventeen whereof written in Holland and first printed there) by Gilbert Burnet ...	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1689 (1689)	Wing B5768; ESTC R3957	183,152	256

he gives to Church-men in his Epistles to Timotby and Titus reckon this of submitting to the directions of the Church for one which he could not have omitted if this be the true meaning of those disputed passages and yet he has not one word sounding that way which is very different from the directions which one possessed with the present view that the Church of Rome has of this matter must needs have given V. There are some things very expresly taught in the New Testament such as the rules of a Good Life the Use of the Sacraments the addressing our selves to God for Mercy and Grace through the Sacrifice that Christ offered for us on the Cross and the Worshipping him as God the Death Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ the Resurrection of our Bodies and Life Everlasting by which it is apparent that we are set beyond doubt in those matters if then there are other passages more obscure concerning other matters we must Conclude that these are not of that Consequence otherwise they would have been as plainly revealed as the others are but above all if the Authority of the Church is delivered to us in disputable terms that is a just prejudice against it since it is a thing of such Consequence that it ought to have been revealed in a way so very clear and past all dispute VI. If it is a presumption for particular persons to judge concerning Religion which must be still referred to the Priests and other Guides in sacred matters this is a good Argument to oblige all Nations to continue in the Established Religion whatever it may happen to be and above all others it was a convincing Argument in the mouths of the Jews against our Saviour He pretended to be the Messias and proved it both by the prophesies that were accomplished in him and by the Miracles that he wrought as for the Prophesies the Reasons urged by the Church of Rome will conclude much stronger that such dark Passages as those of the Prophets were ought not to be interpreted by Particular persons but that the Exposition of these must be referred to the Priests and Sanhedrin it being expresly provided in their law Deut. 17.8 That when controversies arose concerning any cause that was too intricate they were to go to the place which God should choose and to the Priests of the tribe of Levi and to the judge in those days and that they were to declare what was right and to their decision all were obliged to submit under pain of death so that by this it appears that the Priests in the Jewish Religion were authorized in so extraordinary a manner that I dare say the Church of Rome would not wish for a more formal Testimony on her behalf As for our Saviour's Miracles these were not sufficient neither unless his doctrine was first found to be good since Moses had expresly warned the People Deut. 13 1. That if a Prophet came and taught them to follow after other Gods they were not to obey him tho he wrought miracles to prove his Mission but were to put him to death So a Jew saying that Christ by making himself one with his father brought in the worship of another God might well pretend that he was not obliged to yield to the authority of our Saviour's Miracles without taking cognizance of his doctrine and of the Prophesies concerning the Messias and in a word of the whole matter So that if these Reasonings are now good against the Reformation they were as strong in the mouths of the Jews against our Saviour and from hence we see that the authority that seems to be given by Moses to the Priests must be understood with some Restrictions since we not only find the Prophets and Jeremy in particular opposing themselves to the whole body of them but we see likewise that for some considerable time before our Saviour's days not only many ill grounded traditions had got in among them by which the vigour of the moral law was much enervated but likewise they were also universally possessed with a false notion of their Messias so that even the Apostles themselves had not quite shaken off those Prejudices at the time of our Saviour's Ascension So that here a Church that was still the Church of God that had the appointed means of the Expiation of their sins by their Sacrifices and Washings as well as by their Circumcision was yet under great and fatal Errors from which particular persons had no way to extricate themselves but by examining the Doctrine and texts of Scripture and by judging of them according to the Evidence of Truth and the force and freedom of their Faculties VII It seems Evident that the passage Tell the Church belongs only to the Reconciling of Differences that of Binding and of Loosing according to the use of those terms among the Jews signifies only an Authority that was given to the Apostles of giving Precepts by which men were to be obliged to such Duties or set at liberty from them and the gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church J signifies only that the Christian Religion was never to come to an end or to perish and that of Christs being with the Apostles to the end of the world imports only a special Conduct and Protection which the Church may always expect but as the promise I will not leave thee nor forsake thee that belongs to every Christian does not import an infallibility no more does the other And for those passages concerning the spirit of God that searches all things it is plain that in them St. Paul is treating of the Divine inspiration by which the Christian Religion was then opened to the world which he sets in opposition to the wisdom or Philosophy of the Greeks so that as all those passages come far short of proving that for which they are alledged it must at least be acknowledged that they have not an evidence great enough to prove so important a truth as some would evince by them since 't is a matter of such vast consequence that the proofs for it must have an undeniable Evidence VIII In the matters of Religion two things are to be considered first The Account that we must give to God and the Rewards that we expect from him And in this every Man must answer for the sincerity of his Heart in examining Divine Matters and the following what upon the best enquiries that one could make appeared to be true and with Relation to this there is no need of a Judg for in that Great Day every one must answer to God according to the Talents that he had and all will be saved according to their Sincerity and with Relation to that Judgment there is no need of any other Judg but God. A second View of Religion is as it is a Body united together and by consequence brought under some Regulation And as in all States there are subaltern Judges in whose Decisions all

the Bp. they do not renounce in it any Article of Faith but only a bold curiosity of the Schoolmen Yet after all it seems they know that this is contrary to their Doctrine otherwise they would not venture so much upon a point of an old and decried Philosophy II. In order to the stating this matter aright it is necessary to give the true notion of the Real Presence as it is acknowledged by the Reformed We all know in what sense the Church of Rome understands it that in the Sacrament there is no Real Bread and Wine but that under the appearance of them we have the true substance of Christ's glorified Body On the other hand the Reformed when they found the world generally fond of this phrase they by the same Spirit of Compliance which our Saviour and his Apostles had for the Jews and that the Primitive Church had perhaps to excess for the Heathens retained the phrase of Real Presence but as they gave it such a sense as did fully demonstrate that tho they retained a term that had for it a long Prescription yet they quite changed its meaning for they always shewed that the Body and Blood of Christ which they believed present was his Body broken and his Blood shed that is to say his Body not in its glorified state but as it was crucified So that the presence belonging to Christ's dead Body which is not now actually in being it is only his Death that is to be conceived to be presented to us and this being the sense that they always give of the Real Presence the reality falls only on that conveyance that is made to us in the Sacrament by a federal rite of Christ's Death as our Sacrifice The learned Answerer to the Oxford Discourses has so fully demonstrated this from the copious explanations which all the Reformed give of that phrase that one would think it were not possible either to mistake or cavil in so clear a point The Papists had generally objected to the Reformers that they made the Sacrament no more than a bare Commemoratory Feast and some few had carried their aversion to that gross Presence which the Church of Rome had set up to another extream to which the People by a principle of Libertinism might have been too easily carried if the true Dignity of the Sacrament had not been maintained by expressions of great Majesty so finding that the world was possessed of the phrase of the Real Presence they thought fit to preserve it but with an Explanation that was liable to no Ambiguity Yet it seems our Reformers in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign had found that the phrase had more power to carry men to Superstition than the explanations given to it had to retire them from it and therefore the Convocation ordered it to be laid aside tho that order was suppressed out of prudence and the phrase has been ever since in use among us of which Dr. Burnet has given us a copious account Hist Reform 2. Vol. 3. Book III. The Difference between the notion of the Sacrament's being a meer Commemoratory Feast and the Real Presence is an great as the value of the Kings head stamped upon a Medal differs from the currant coyn or the Impression made by the Great Seal upon Wax differs from that which any Carver or Graver may make The one is a meer Memorial but the other has a sacred badge of Authority in it The Paschal Lamb was not only a Remembrance of the Deliverance of the People of Israel out of Egypt but a continuance of the Covenant that Moses made between God and them which distinguished them from all the Nations round about them as well as the first Passover had distinguished them from the Egyptians Now it were a strange Inference because the Lamb was called the Lords Passeover that is the Sacrifice upon the sprinkling of whose Blood the Angel passed over or passed by the Houses of the Israelites when he smote the first-born of the Egyptians to say that there was a change of the substance of the Lamb or because the Real saith of a Prince is given by his Great Seal printed on Wax and affixed to a Parchment that therefore the substance of the Wax is changed so it is no less absurd to imagine that because the Bread and the Wine are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ as broken and shed that is his death Really and effectually offered to us as our Sacrifice that therefore the substance of the Bread and Wine are changed And thus upon the whole matter that which is present in the Sacrament is Christ Dead and since his death was transacted above 1600. years ago the reality of his presence can be no other than a Real offer of his death made to us in an instituted and federal symbole I have explained this the more fully because with this all the ambiguity in the use of that commonly received phrase falls off IV. As for the Doctrine of the Ancient Church there has been so much said in this Enquiry that a Man cannot hope to add any new discoveries to what has been already found out therefore I shall only endeavour to bring some of the most Important Observations into a narrow compass and to set them in a good light and shall first offer some general Presumptions to shew that it is not like that this was the Doctrine of the Primitive times and then some Positive proof of it 1. It is no slight Presumption against it that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do naturally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome these Objections do not arise out of profound study or great learning but from the plain dictates of common sense which make it hard to say no more for us to believe that a Body can be in more places than one at once and that it can be in a place after the manner of a spirit that Accidents can be without their subject or that our senses can deceive us in the plainest cases We find the Fathers explain some abstruse difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries that were less known and were more Speculative and while they are thought perhaps to over-do the one it is a little strange that they should never touch the other but on the contrary when they treat of Philosophical matters they express themselves roundly in opposition to those consequences of this Doctrine whereas since this Doctrine has been received we see all the speculations of Philosophy have been so managed as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine So that the uncautious way in which the Father 's handled them in proof of which Volumes of quotations can be made shews they had not then received that Doctrine which must of necessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did 2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the