Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A41550
|
Serious advice to a preservative against the blasphemous heresie of Socinianism by J.G.G.
|
Gailhard, J. (Jean)
|
1695
(1695)
|
Wing G128; ESTC R25093
|
29,852
|
44
|
to be called is really to be so as of John Baptist Thou Child shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest Luke 1.76 shall really be so or else if he had not really been it had been a Lie Man was to have no hand in the Birth of that Child for the Virgin knew no Man it was to be a Production only of the Holy Ghost coming upon the Virgin and of the Power of the Highest overshadowing her Here we must draw a Curtain and a Door before this high Mystery yet we may say that to bring into the World one that should be meerly a Man there had been no need of this transcendent unspeakable and incomprehensible way If it was intended he should have been no more than a Man there had been no need of altering the usual Course of Generation as it was not in * Take notice of the difference Moses as a Servant Christ as a Son over his own House Heb. 3.5 6. Moses Elijah upon whom afterwards God poured his Spirit So if the Lord Jesus had been but a Man he might have been begotten of a Man and afterwards God might have bestowed his Spirit upon him in a higher measure than ever it had been upon any Man that went before but the overshadowing of the Highest was not in vain because God doth nothing in vain The Holy Ghost alone might have preserved him from Sin in his Conception but there had been no need of the overshadowing of the Highest Take notice how Christ is also called the Highest and the Great God Luke 1.76 Tit. 2.13 Let us compare the Cases between the Birth of John the Baptist of whom our Saviour saith thus * Luke 7.28 Amongst those that were born of Women there was not a greater Prophet than John the Baptist and that of the Lord Jesus In the first two things are remarkable the first That an Angel was sent to Announce his Birth The second That he should be filled with the Holy Ghost from his Mothers Womb all the rest was Natural and Common Chap. 1. Thy Wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a Son Here according to the usual Course of Nature a Child was to be born of a Husband and his Wife though Old yet the thing happened before to others but in the Person of Christ is a Child born of a Woman without Man The Angel said to Zachariah nothing of the Holy Ghost coming upon Elizabeth nothing of the highest overshadowing her as to the Virgin Mary And we know how never one Man or one Prophet spoke of another as John Baptist did of our Lord and Saviour he knew his distance the difference between them and his nothing in comparison with him * John 1.27 30 He that comes after me and whose Shoes latchet I am not worthy to unloose the same was before me yet born six Months after him and before Abraham too though there were 42 Generations between them O that Pre-existence hath no Humane Foundation and can be attributed to nothing but to an Eternal Being he owneth he was not the Christ but he was sent before him to cry in the Wilderness Make straight the way of the Lord Jehovah Verse 34 and I saw and bare Record that this is the Son of God Wherefore upon occasion our Saviour saith of John Baptist He bare record of me unto the Truth Chap. 5.33 34. though I need no such thing for I receive not Testimony from Man however he bare Witness unto the Truth that I am the Son of God And indeed if to prove it there was but one or few such Texts and Particulars in Scripture about Christ some might happen to think there is room for Cavils and Exceptions but so many things and in so many several places being said to that purpose and all tending to confirm that Truth how he is True God and Only True Son of God there is no reasonable ground left to doubt of it ‖ 1 John 5.20 We know saith St. John that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is True even in his Son Jesus Christ This is the True God and Eternal Life Nothing plainer than that Jesus Christ is the True God Relatives ought to be applied to the next Scripture mentioneth four kinds of Generation the first by Father and Mother that is the Common The second without Father or Mother which is properly Creation so Adam was begotten and on this account called Son of God The third of a Father without Mother thus Eve was formed out of Adam's Rib But the fourth and more Miraculous is of a Mother without a Father thus our Blessed Saviour was born of a Woman without the help of Man But all these do relate only to a Temporal Generation but that of Jesus Christ Son of God in a strict Sence by the Father is Eternal Now the Office of Mediator required a Person that should be both God and Man to perform those things that were to be done in relation to both As for instance To Suffer and Die was the part of Humane Nature which the Divine is not capable of but to overcome Death and our Spiritual Enemies could not be effected but by a Divine Power And it also became the Majesty of God that the Mediator should be God which Majesty is so great that none but he that is intimate and equal with the Father could interpose between God and Man Angels themselves could and dared not undertake it for they stand in need of Christ Mediator and * Job 15.15 they are not Pure in God's sight which makes them hide their ‖ Isa 6.2 Face in his Presence now much less any Man only such Besides who but a God could destroy Sin appease God's Wrath overcome the Power of Satan and Death Natural and Eternal Who could make Expiation for Offences committed against an Infinite God but he that is Infinite himself By whose Intercession could God's Anger be pacified but thorough his that is his Beloved Son By whose Power could Satan and the whole Power of Darkness be overcome but by him that is stronger than all the Devils and Hell And who could conquer Death but he that hath destroyed him that hath the Power of Death Heb. 2.14 And as none but a God could deliver us from all these Evils under whose Power we were so none but a God could restore us to the Goods we had lost As first Who could have restored us to a perfect Righteousness but he that is Righteousness it self Who to God's Image Chap. 1.3 but he that is the express Image of his Person and the Brightness of his Glory Who could make us Children of God but he that is his Natural and only begotten and beloved Son Who could bestow upon us the Holy Ghost but he from whom the Holy Ghost proceedeth And who could give us Eternal Life but he that is Life it self And by whom could we
Serious Advice TO A PRESERVATIVE Against the Blasphemous Heresie OF SOCINIANISM Do not I hate them O Lord that hate thee And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee I hate them with a perfect Hatred I count them mine Enemies Psal 139.21 22. By J. G. G. LONDON Printed for Geo. Grafton and are to be Sold by Ric. Baldwin at the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-lane 1695. Serious Advice to a Preservative against the Blasphemous Heresie of Socinianism NOW more than ever there is cause to say the last Days and Times foretold by the Apostles * 2 Tim. 3.1 2 3 4 5. St. Paul and ‖ 1 John 2.18 St. John are come upon us For not only Iniquity in Practise doth abound every where and the Man and Manner of Sin is daily more and more discovered But also Perverseness in Judgment in no less than Heresie and Blasphemy walks bare-faced with those who are so far delivered up to Satan as to deny the Lord of Glory For abominable Socinianism which is a Sink of the Cerinthians Ebionites Sabellians Samosatenians Photinians Arrians Semi-Arrians Anti-Trinitarians Pelagians and of several other Hereticks doth now proudly appear and in Effect defie Christian Religion and attempts to overthrow the Foundation of the Gospel not in one but several parts thereof It is for me a Matter of Wonderful Grief to see the Boldness and Impudence of that Abominable Heresie as it were Triumphantly to come in of one side and the Silence and Sluggishness of those that should oppose it on the other * Jer. 9.1 O that my Head were Waters and mine Eyes a Fountain of Tears that I might Weep day and night for the Guilt which is thereby contracted upon the Nation My Purpose is for the present by the Grace of God only to give in my Evidence in the Case and that as briefly and plainly as I can to condescend to the meanest Capacity But if by Providence I be further engaged in the Matter I shall grudge neither Time nor Pains upon so Just so Necessary and so Glorious an Account as to bear Record for the Fundamental Truth of Christian Religion Laelius Socinus the Uncle and Faustus Socinus his Nephew both of Siena in Italy soon after the Death of Detestable Servetus did the first conceive and the second bring forth their Damnable Opinions which amongst the rest are these They deny the most Holy and Adorable Trinity Christ's Divinity his being Coeternal in Time if we may use that word with the Father Coessential in Nature and Coequal in Power they will not own he hath given the Father Satisfaction for our Sins but only obtained for us by our Faith and Obedience to satisfie for our selves They say he died for our Good but not in our Place he died for himself not for his Sins but for the Mortality and Infirmity of our Nature which he had assumed he became not our High Priest till after his Ascension into Heaven How Man before his Fall was Naturally Mortal and had no Original Righteousness that in us there is no Original Sin as it imports a Deformity of Nature The Holy Ghost they admit not to be God no more than Christ whose Incarnation they affirm to be against Reason and without Proofs of Scripture With Pelagians they are against Providence and Matters of Grace All these and others abominable Errors which destroy the whole Foundation and Work of our Salvation are to be found in the Books of Socinus Crellius Ostorodius c. How far will Men go when once they are fallen into and engaged in an evil way When God hath left them in the Blindness and Darkness of their Understanding and given them up to the Imaginations and Counsels of their evil Hearts to the Temptations of Satan and to their own Natural Corruption We see it in the case of that Wicked Arrius who within a short time from the Year 323 till 336 drew a great part of the World after him and in the other of that great Impostor Mahomet who agreed with Arrius against the Deity of the Lord Jesus wherein he is followed by Socinians That Man thorough a Judgment of God * 2 Thess 2.11 sending a strong Delusion that Men should believe a Lye by the means of a Foolish Book of a Nonsensical Alcoran of pretended Trances and Raptures when he was in his Fit of the Falling-sickness and of the Cheat of a Pidgeon picking as it had been taught some Grains out of his Ear as if the Angel Gabriel under that shape had then been Suggesting his Religion and Doctrine to him with some Allowance to the Pleasures of the Flesh in this World and Promises of the like in the next by these means and the Trick of his Tomb at Mecca hath drawn a great part of the World after him In order to settle their Impious Principles Socinians go about two things First To overthrow the Ground of our Faith and Religion with their attempting to undermine Holy Scriptures which are the Foundation and Rule of it To bring it about They affirm the Old Testament to be needless for Christians as for the Books of the New they allow not the Authors thereof to have been Inspired by the Spirit of God positively against what is said 2 Tim. 3.16 and therein they would have some places to contradict others grant this and you take away the Infallibility and Truth of Scripture and if it be yielded of one Text why not of many more If so What will become of Christian Religion grounded upon the Gospel For if we must believe St. Paul who * Gal. 1.11 12. Certifies it is not after Man for he neither received it of Man neither was he taught it but by Revelation of Jesus Christ The second thing Socinians do to promote their Blasphemies is To make Natural Reason the Principle of Religion for they give all to Reason as if it was Infallible and could not be imposed upon and nothing to the Authority and Consent of the Church nor of Scripture it self according to this Rule of theirs That no Interpretation of Holy Scripture is to be admitted except it doth agree with Natural Reason and to the Evident Experience of outward Senses Instead of the Traditions which Papists bring in they would have their own Reason without the Influences of the Spirit of God to be the genuine and proper Interpreter of God's Holy Word So take away the Rule and you bring in Disorder and Confusion We know and own how Faith doth not destroy Reason rather it doth Refine and Purifie it so God forbid we should exclude Reason from Religion for 't is Subservient to it Reason indeed hath something of Religion for by the Light of Nature in things of the World and Course of Providence one may be convinced how there is a Being of Beings a first Cause of all and a God whose Power and Wisdom appeareth in the Works and Order of Nature which as * Psal