Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	book_n	life_n	write_v	4,779	5	6.1891	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30350	Four discourses delivered to the clergy of the Diocess of Sarum ... by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1694 (1694)	Wing B5793; ESTC R202023	160,531	125

Messias during the Second Temple and about the time that our Saviour appeared which disposed them so easily to hearken to every Impostor Their Temple has been destroyed their Nation dispersed their Genealogies lost by which the certainty of their being Abraham's Seed subsists no more and their Sacrifices have ceased now above 1600. Years So that their hatred of us and yet their Books agreeing with ours when joined together make no small part of our Argument But now to come to the strength of our Cause I lay it thus The Gospels were published in the time when many persons were yet alive who knew and were appealed to for the Passages contained in them Which is made out thus First They mention the Temple and Nation of the Iews as still in being which shews they were written before the Destruction of Ierusalem More particularly St. Luke writ the Acts of the Apostles two Years after St. Paul's going to Rome with which he ends that Book And he begins it with the mention of his Gospel as writ some time before that His Gospel also begins with an Account of some other Gospels that had been then writ Now St. Paul's going to Rome happened two or three and twenty Years after the time of our Saviour's Passion and Resurrection so early were these things put in writing They were no sooner written than they were read in the Assemblies of the Christians as the Iews were wont to read the Law and the Prophets in their Synagogues This we do find from St. Iustin's Apology was the practice of his time which was less than an hundred Years after they were written So that we clearly see these Writings were not kept as Secrets to be divulged as the Depositaries of them thought fit according to the way that the Romans had used about the Sybilline Oracles but were immediately copied out for the use of all the Churches and of as many private Christians as could compass the Copying them The Epistles of the Apostles do carry in them Characters that lead us very near the time in which they were written And by comparing those of St. Paul with the Books writ by St. Luke we see when most of his Epistles were writ many of them being before his going to Rome Now these Epistles were addressed to whole Bodies and Churches and they do often appeal to the Life Death Resurrection and Ascension of Christ as matters which were then well known and firmly believed by all Christians From all which I at present infer no more but that these things were published in the time and were known in many remote Provinces soon after they were transacted and were not kept close to be published in some other Age when it might have been easie for bold Impostors to make any thing pass with a credulous multitude Now all this was published near the Fountain and was so soon spread that in Nero's time we know by Tacitus that there were great numbers of them at Rome who had fallen under a publick Odium and on whom Nero though he had burnt Rome himself threw the hatred of that Conflagration and punished them with the severity that such a Crime if truly proved against them had well deserved In the Gospels we have the Relations of our Saviour's Miracles of many of his Transactions with the Iewish Nation so circumstantiated more particularly the Account of his Death and Resurrection is given so minutely that the Iews who might have been easily Masters of the Books in which these were contained had it in their power to have overthrown the credit of them in many Instances if they had found any falshoods in them If they had not sealed the Sepulchre or asked of Pilate a grant to watch it if that Guard had not run away in the night and given out a story of their having fallen asleep the Iews could have well disproved this upon which the whole depended Now as the Iews were engaged both out of their hatred of our Saviour and his Doctrine and to justifie themselves from the Imputations of having shed his Blood and that of his Followers to have pursued this matter so close as to have convinced the World of its falshood so the progress that it made did alarm them too much to make any one imagine that they could despise it They had it also in their power by the Registers which were in their hands and at least during Agrippa's Reign they were in so happy and flourishing a condition that it cannot be said that the ill state of their Affairs took from them either the heart or the leisure to look after this All which received a great confirmation from St. Paul's Conversion who from being one not only of their Zealots and Pharisees but of the most furious Persecutors of this Religion was so strangely struck down and changed while a company of their own People were about him that he became afterwards the most successful of all the first Planters of Christianity He did very frequently appeal to that matter of Fact in which it had been easie to have taken away his Credit if they could have denied it So far then I have gone to shew that this matter was published early and in the sight of those who were both most concerned and most able to have detected any deceit that might have been in it who did not by any Act of which there remains the least print among either the Writings of their own Nation or of the other Enemies to Christianity attempt to discredit it Had not the Genealogies of Christ been taken exactly out of the Temple-Registers the bare shewing of them had served to have confuted the whole for if in any one thing the Registers of their Genealogies were clear and uncontroverted Since these proved that they were Abraham's Seed and likewise made out their Title to the Lands which from the days of Ioshua were to pass down either to immediate Descendants or as they failed to Collateral Degrees Now this shews plainly that there was a double Office kept of their Pedigrees one was natural and might be taken when the Rolls of Circumcision were made up and the other related to the Division of the Land in which when the Collateral Line came instead of the Natural then the last was dropt as extinct and the other remained It being thus plain from their Constitution that they had these two Orders of Tables we are not at all concerned in the diversity of the two Evangelists on this head since both might have Copied them out from those two Offices at the Temple and if they had not done it faithfully the Iews could have Authentically demonstrated their Error in entitling our Saviour to that received Character of the Messias that he was to be the Son of David by a false Pedigree therefore since no Exceptions were made in the time when the sight of the Rolls must have ended the Enquiry it is plain that they were faithfully Copied out Nor

the works of the law And by the tenor of the whole Discourse it is plain That by the works of the law are meant the Mosaical Precepts and not the Works of Moral Vertue For St. Paul had divided Mankind into those who were in or under the law and those who were without law that is into Iew and Gentile The design of the Epistle was not to give us Metaphysical Abstractions and Distinctions between Faith as it is a special Grace and Works or Obedience to the Laws of God but by Faith he means the entire receiving of the whole Gospel in its Commands as well as Promises for so he reckons Abraham's readiness to offer up his Son Isaac as an Act of his faith so that faith stands for the complex of all the Duties of Christianity and therefore his Assertion of our being justified by faith without the works of the law signifies no more than that those who received the Gospel who believed it and lived according to it were put in the favour of God by it without being brought under the obligation of the Mosaical Precepts The same Argument is handled by him upon the same grounds in his Epistle to the Galatians only there he gives a more explicite notion of that faith which justified that it was a faith that wrought by love So that in all St. Paul's Epistles he understands by faith the compleat receiving the Gospel in all its parts But whether these Expressions were any of those that St. Peter says the unstable wrested to their own perdition or not we see plainly by St. Iames's Epistle that some began to set up the Notion of a bare believing the Gospel as that which justified as if the meer profession of Christianity or the persuasion of its truth without a suitable Conversation justified For St. Iames speaks not of the works of law but of works simply and as he had just reason to condemn a Doctrine that tended to the total corruption of our Faith so he plainly shews that he did not differ from St. Paul since he takes his chief Instance from Abraham's Faith which made him offer up his Son Isaac upon the Altar by which he was justified so that faith wrought in his works and by works faith was made perfect And he concludes all That as the body without the spirit was dead so faith without works was dead also From whence it is plain that faith in St. Iames stands strictly for a believing the Truth of the Christian Religion and not for an entire receiving the Gospel which was the faith that St. Paul had treated of These things will appear so clear to any one who will attentively read and consider the scope of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans and Galatians and the Discourse in St. Iames's Epistle that I am confident no scruple can remain in men that are not possessed with prejudices or over-run with a nice sort of Metaphysicks that some have brought into these matters by which they have instead of clearing them rendred them very intricate and unintelligible Their stating the instrumentality of faith in Justification their distinguishing it from Obedience in this but joining it with it in Sanctification are niceties not only without any ground in Scripture but really very hurtful by the disquiet they may give good minds For if the Christian Doctrine is plain in any one thing it must be in this which is the foundation of our quiet and of our hope It would make a long Article to reckon up all the different Subtilties with which this matter has been perplexed As whether Justification is an immanent or transient Act whether it is a Sentence pronounced in Heaven or in the Conscience or whether it is only a Relation and what constitutes it what is the efficient the instrument and the condition of it these with much more of the like nature filled many Books some years ago The strict sense of Iustification as it is a legal term and opposite to Condemnation is the absolution of a Sinner which is not to be solemnly done till the final Sentence is pronounced after death or at the day of Judgment But as men come to be in the state to which those Sentences do belong they in a freer form of speech are said to be justified or condemned And as they who do not believe are under condemnation and said to be condemned already that is they are liable to that Sentence and under those Characters that belong to it blindness obduration of heart and the Wrath and Judgments of God So such Believers to whom the Promises of the Gospel belong and on whom the final Sentence shall be pronounced justifying them are said now to be justified since they are now in the state to which that belongs They have the Characters of it upon them Faith Repentance and Renovation of heart and life by which they come to be in the favour and under the protection of God The Gospel is of the nature of a publick Amnesty in which a Pardon is offered to all Rebels who return to their duty and live peaceably in obedience to the Law and a day is prefixed to examine who has come in upon it and who has stood out upon which final Acts of Grace or Severity are to pass It is then plain that though every man is pardoned in the strictness of Law only by the final Sentence yet he is really in the construction of Law pardoned upon his coming within the Terms on which it is offered and thus men are justified who do truly repent of and forsake their sins who do sincerely believe not only the truth of the Gospel in general but do so firmly believe every part of it that acts proportioned to that belief arise out of it when they depend so much on the Promises that they venture all things in hope of them and do so receive the Rules and Laws given in it that they set themselves on obeying them in the course of their whole life and in a most particular manner when they lay claim to the Death of Christ as their Sacrifice and the means of their Reconciliation with such a Repentance as changes their inward Natures and Principles and such a Faith as purifies their hearts and makes them become new Creatures These are the Conditions of this Covenant and they are such Conditions that upon lower than these it became not the Infinite Purity and Holiness of God to offer us pardon or to receive us into his favour For without these the Mercies and Favours of the Gospel had been but the opening a Sanctuary to Criminals and the giving encouragement to Sin if a few howlings to God for mercy and the earnest imploring it for the sake of Christ and on the account of his Death would serve turn This every man under the least agony of thought will be apt to do especially when death seems to be near him and yet be still in all