Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	eternal_a	sin_n	temporal_a	8,837	5	8.6794	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26960	More reasons for the Christian religion and no reason against it, or, A second appendix to the Reasons of the Christian religion being I. an answer to a letter from an unknown person charging the Holy Scriptures with contradictions, II. some animadversions on a tractate De Veritate, written by ... Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury ... / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Reasons of the Christian religion.	1672 (1672)	Wing B1313; ESTC R4139	63,611	190

was not existent till 4000 years after having any proper casuality to change Gods mind or will The sum of the Christian Doctrine about the Interposition and Redemption by the Son for man upon his fall is but this As if God should say I will not destroy or damn sinful man remedilesly according to the strict termes of the Law of Innocency which he hath broken but will give him a remedying Covenant of Grace because I will in the fulness of Time provide better for the glorifying of my Truth and Holiness wisdome and goodness justice and mercy than the remediless destruction of mankind would do even by the Incarnation doctrine sacrifice merits c. of the eternal word So that this grand work of God is the cause of his subordinate works but not the cause of any real but only relative or denominative mutation in himself This all sound Christians are agreed in And can this offend you Secondly And for the termes of communication of Grace to man it is either First The New Covenant as a Gift of pardon and life Secondly Or the conditions which it requireth of man First The former you neither do find fault with nor can do That God should give the world a Recovering and pardoning Law Secondly The second is all that is here liable to your exception And what do you think amiss in that First Not that Repentance is one of the Conditions of further Grace for that you plead for Secondly Not that Fides in Deum misericordem Faith in Gods revealed me●cy as pardoning sin is required of man for that also you plead for But you would have his goodness and mercy to be a sufficient satisfaction to his Justice Answ First I hope you will not exclude his wisdome because you abhorre Atheism as folly Secondly And I hope you will distinguish between the prime satisfying Cause and the satisfying means These plainly differ The prime satisfying Cause is Gods wisdome contriving and determining of the fittest way to communicate his love and spirit But the prime satisfying means is Jesus Christ who was to do that which was fittest to attain the foresaid ends But that which you will accept against is that the Belief in Christs future incarnation was made then necessary to salvation Answ First See that you feign not the Christian Doctrine to say more of this than indeed it doth which I have opened to you before I told you how narrow the Apostles own faith was before Christs Resurrection We know that ●● the believing Jews knew not so much as they nor so much as the Prophets and more illuminated men And we know that the rest of the world had not so full a revelation as the Jews But we know that all that had the notice of his promise were to believe the truth thereof And those that had not the word of promise made known to them had the possession of many such mercies as that promise gave and as intimated much of the same grace which the promise did Thefore none could be bound to lessthan to believe that God of his mercy would pardon sin and save penitent Believers by such a means of securing the honour of his holiness truth and justice as his infinite wisdome should provide This much you cannot deny And that the promise of the Victorious seed though it seem too obscure to bind men to so distinct a faith as ours is was by Tradition told to Adams posterity and that they had a General belief of such an expiation for some time seemeth intimated in the early and almost universal use of sacrificing of which I shall speak more anon Hitherto then I have vindicated the Christian Doctrine of mans salvation for the first 4000 years Secondly And is there any thing since which should make it more offensive to you First As to the Person of Christ I have said enough in my Treatise the Reason of Christian Religion Verily I think it far harder to confute those that feign all the world to be animated by God as the universal Soul and to conceive how God who is most intimate to all things in whom we live and move and are should not be as neerly united to all things as Christians believe him to be to the humane nature of Christ though undoubtedly it is not so than that he should have that neer union with his humane nature Secondly And as to Christs work I have so largely shewed you the necessity the reasonableness and the harmonical congruities that I will not repeat them In a word The New Testament is the Doctrine of the eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wisdome or word of God Incarnate to communicate the Divine Spirit and love to man to be a sacrifice for sin the Conqueror of Satan Death and Sin the Head over All things to the Church the Author of Redemption the grand Administrator of the new Covenant the Reconciler and Restorer of man to God the Teacher Ruler and High Preist of the Church in order to this our Restoration and Salvation Thirdly But if it be the Time of his coming that doth offend you I have answered that and further adde First What is there in foolish man that should encourage him to dream that he better knoweth the fittest season for Gods works than God himself Secondly Man was not all the while before without the Benefits of this dedesigned and undertaken Redemption He was still under a Covenant of Grace Thirdly Consider well that God did not intend to give mankind that had so heinously sinned by preferferring the Devils word before his a present and a perfect pardon but onely to give a new Law and Covenant which should be a conditional gift of pardon to be obteined in full perfection in time and by degrees we had made our selves voluntarily the Slaves of Satan And God would not deliver us all at once We had forfeited the heavenly assistance of the holy spirit and God would not give it us all at once Mans time of healing the wounds of his own sin is the time of this life and the perfect cure will not be done till our entrance into the perfect world And as it is with Individual men so it is with the world of all mankind Grace mitateth nature and doth all by degrees darker Revelations were meeter for the Infancy of the world and clearer at noon day and riper knowledge fitter for its maturity And when Satan by Divine permission had plai'd his part and seemed to triumph over the sinful world it was time for Christ to come by Power Wisdom and Goodness meanly cloathed to cast down his Temples and Altars to subsidue his Kingdoms and to triumph over the Triumpher Fourthly But if it be the present conditions of the new Covenant since Christs Resurrection that offendeth you viz that the world is required to believe in him I have answered that and now adde First Remember what I said before that no mans condition is made worse by Christ than

be then to say that our Repentance was sufficient without the Sacrifice and Merit and Intercession and Administration which did procure and behow it How absurd is it to say that the Cure of our Disease is sufficient for us without the Physician the Medicine the Apothecary the Application which we see by certain experience are the things that work this Cure And which you your self cannot deny but that they effect this Cure of Repentance or Holiness far more easily and commonly than it is ever wrought without them Nay it is certain that the Grace of Christ is absolutely necessary to Repentance and holiness in any one in the world whatsoever be thought of the necessity of the knowledge of Christ incarnate II. Quest Whether the Notitiae Communes be not many more than this learned and noble writer doth enumerate viz. First That there is one onely God at least supreme whom he very well describeth by his attributes Secondly That this God is to be worshipped and prayed to Religion being ultima hominis differentia pag. 214 Thirdly That the due conformity of our faculties that is their holiness and rectitude is the chief part of Gods worship especially Gratitude Fourthly That all vices and crimes must be expiated by repentance Fifthly That after this life there is another life of rewards and punishment Answ All these are excellent concessions as being not onely Truths but such Notitiae Communes without which a man is scarce a man but unman'd Except that the fourth doth erroneously assert the foredisproved sufficient satisfactoriness in our Repentance And that this is not a Notitia Communis I further thus manifest First By all humane Laws and Justice No King will make such a Law as this Let all the subjects be Traytors Murderers Oppressors Perjured never so long and Repent at any time before they die and all shall be forgiven meer Repentance will not save such persons from the Gallows Secondly And as to more private Justice no man giveth his children and servants such a Law Disobey me burn my house seek my death and do all the mischief you can and repent at last and you shall be forgiven Therefore meer Repentance is not sufficient satisfaction according to the Notitiae Communes of mankind Thirdly The reason of the thing doth prove it Because it is not sufficient to secure the ends of Government Should such a Law alone be made that men shall be forgiven all the villanies of their lives if they will but repent at last First It would encourage the most in the world to live in all manner of wickedness If the hearts of men are fully set in them to do evil because sentence against an evil work is not speedily executed but delayed How much more if they were sure it should never be executed Secondly The Laws and Lawgiver would be contemned and lose their Ruling power Thirdly The common good would be prostituted and cast away utterly and no man should live in safety and peace because of the dominion of wickedness Object Doth not Christianity then introduce these evils which giveth pardon to all the penitent Answ No First because that only Christianity doth acquaint us of a further satisfaction to justice than mans repentance by which all these ends of Government may be obtained better than by our perdition Secondly Because it giveth us no assurance of life and time of Repentance but calleth us to be alwaies penitent and ready Thirdly Because it telleth us of the blindness of the mind the power of sin and hardness of the heart by which Repentance becometh so great and hard a work that without Gods grace it will not be done And his grace is to be diligently sought in the use of means and is so little at our command as that the resisting of the holy Ghost may cause us to be forsaken of God and given over to our own hearts lusts to walk in our own Counsells Psal 81. 11 12. Fourthly Because God doth not totally and perfectly pardon all sin when he doth pardon the everlasting punishment though some in their ignorance will say so and revile those that will not be as ignorant He pardoneth not temporal chastisements and death he remitteth not the sad penalties of a temporary and partial desertion by his spirit horrours of Conscience and fears of Hell He remitteth not the temporal punishment by Magistrates but commandeth Justice to be done even on the penitent even to the loss of life it self Fifthly And his mercy is so great that through Christ he will forgive the eternal punishment and will judge men as he findeth them and not as they have been before conversion So that without Christ you cannot imagine how God should neither send one to Hell or misery that loveth him and hath his Image nor yet expose his Government Laws and the common good to so much mischief as the Proclamation of a pardon to all villanies that are but repented of at last alone would cause Object But if the King must not save a Traitor or Murderer because Christ died and satisfied for him why should you say that God doth so Answ First Because Christs Sacrifice and merits were not to satisfie the King but God Secondly Because that God who is satisfied by them hath told us how far and with what exceptions he is satisfied Not so far as to excuse men from the Laws of men or temporal Justice chastisement or death but to save them from everlasting misery and procure them everlasting happiness and to sanctifie their unremitted castigatory penalties to the furtherance of these ends And that there are more Notitiae Communes about Religion than the five forenamed is easily manifested It is as common a truth that all men are sinful and depraved even from the first however it came to pass that they are indisposed to the certain duties and ends which their nature was formed for That God is the universal Governour of man by moral means That he is just and true that God only can make known to us what is pleasing to himself and what reward or punishment he will retribute That mans darkness is so great that he learneth all this from nature alone with great imperfection doubtfulness and dissatisfaction That therefore a further supernatural Revelation which is sure would be a great confirmation and satisfaction to mans minds And therefore almost all the world do hearken after Oracles Prophecies Visions or some such further Revelation as Conscious of the unsatisfactoriness of their natural light That all Gods Revelations are certainly true That whatever Revelation hath First On the doctrine of it no contradiction to natural truth but the clear Impress of divine Power Wisdom and Goodness as its self evidence Secondly And maketh the same impress by divine co-operation on mans Souls in sanctifying them Thirdly And was attested by a multitude of evident uncontrolled Miracles Resurrection raising the dead giving to multitudes a Spirit of Miracles c. this Revelation