Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A89447
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A box of spikenard newly broken not so much for the preparation of the burial; as for the clearer illustration, and exornation of the birth and nativity of our blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus. Contained in a short and sweet discourse which was at first hinted, and occasioned through a question propounded by R.B.P. de K. Which is now answered and resloved by T.M. P. de P.
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Malpas, Thomas.
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1659
(1659)
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Wing M340; Thomason E2140_2; ESTC R208367
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46,250
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128
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hath commanded his Covenant for ever holy and reverend is His Name But in your second Reason you say That you never heard a good Argument for it Well be it so as you say yet I dare say that you say it not so much out of your Ignorance as through a misconstruction and sinister Interpretation of that which you have both heard and read concerning this thing Wherefore for answering you first Hoc tibi innotescere velimus we do you to wit or would have you to know and understand That albeit the gray-headed Antiquity and Authority of our dear Mother the Church of England and the uniform Discipline with Us established for some Centuries of years making and constituting it an antient and laudable Order and generally approved Custome may be a sufficient Plea Argument and VVarrant to perswade you or any other rational man to consent and conforme unto it for what saith grave St. Austin He that will have God to be his Father must acknowledge the Church of God for his Mother and then let every Member of this Church remember that good and wholesome advice of Solomon's Prov. 11.8 My Son hear thy Fathers Instruction and forsake not thy Mothers teaching For St. Austin tells us in his Epist 118. Extremae est dementiae seu insolentis insaniae ea negligere 〈◊〉 repudiare quae tota observat ecclesia It is extream folly and insolent madnesse to neglect and refuse to observe those things which the whole Church whereof we are born Members doth observe yet for your better satisfaction herein I have a desire and purpose to bring in a few Arguments which perhaps may be thought by some to be as good and strong and forcible for the keeping of this Day as any you have hi her to urged or may hereafter devise and produce against it The first that I shall propound and present to your quaint and curious and supercilious censure or to your Austere and Rigid consideration shall be the Legality and lawfulness of Ordering and Ordaining and setting apart of some dayes of publick Thanksgiving and holy rejoycing to the Lord for great Benefits and publick Blessings received which if this day of Christ his Incarnation and Manifestation in the flesh might be but set up and celebrated amongst the rest as it deserveth I am perswaded it would contend and strive so for the Superiority and Preheminence above the rest that it would even devour and swallow the rest up as Aarons Serpent did the Serpents of those Egyptian Magicians and Praestigiators or excell them and cast them down as the Ark did Dagon or as the Image of Christ when it was placed by the Senators at Rome in the Capitol threw down the Image of Jupiter Mars Mercury and others of their feigned heathenish gods as Ensebius and Nicephorus report it for truth and the Men of this Generation would soon condescend and yield to this motion and not deny nor gain-say this reasonable proposition if they were not too much like those blind and blinded Pharisees among the Jews who were for the most part culicem excolantes Camelum deglutientes apt and inclined to strain at a Gnat and swallow a Cammel Math. 23 24. For if it be lawful to give God thanks for Corporal and Temporal Deliverances How much more for our Spiritual and Eternal Deliverance by Christ from the thraldome of sinne and Sathan Again If it shall be thought lawful and allowable to praise God for the spilling of blood 2 Kings 6. and destroying of Mens lives which yet neither the Prophet Elisha 2 Chron. 2.8 nor the Prophet Oded would allow of how much more then shall it be lawfull and commendable to praise the Lord for the sparing and preserving of Mens lives and for the saving of their Souls and freeing or delivering both their Bodies and Souls from the everlasting pains and torments of Death and Hell For the Son of Man came to seak and save that which was lost and God sent not his Son into the World to condemn the World but that the World through Him might be saved Joh. 3.17 The second Argument which I shall here set down for the solemnity of this Day I will make bold to borrow from the words of St. Austin which I do not onely conjecture but presume were Preached and Delivered by him on the very Day we find them recorded in his Serm. 2. 4. de tempore Behold saith he all of us are bidden on this Day to a Marriage for Christ came out of the Virgins Womb as a Bridegroom out of his Chamber the Godhead was joyned unto the Flesh and the Flesh unto the God-head and these two were coupled together and after an ineffable manner in an ineffable Marriage made one The marriage-Chamber was the Virgins Womb which he abhorred not out of which that Sun of Righteousness Christ Jesus came in the day of his Birth as a Bridegroom out of his Chamber Psal 19.5 and as a strong man joyfull to run his race For the Son of God knowing that according to the eternall decree enacted in the Court of Heaven our Salvation could not be perfected before he was Incarnate Gal. 4.4 in the fulnesse of time came down sealing our Redemption with rejoycing of Spirit and gladnesse of heart exsuiting trium phing and preparing himself to the desired work of his mediatorship Long had the Church waited and prayed for this coming of Christ in the flesh Isa 64.1 O would God thou wouldest burst the Heavens and come down Cant. 8.1 O that then werst as my Brother which sucked the breast of my Mother partaking the same humane nature with me I would find thee without here below on Earth I would kisse thee and familiarly intreat thee without the reproach of the World Then I would lead thee and bring thee into my Mothers house though now I am penned up in the Straights of Judea I would bring thee into the Light and Knowledge of the Universal Church whose Daughter I am and herefore he was worthily called desideratus omnium gentium Hag. 2.7 the desired of all Nations but when he came he came merily with nimbleness of Spirit zeal of Piety fervency of Love as the Church espying him joyfully relates it It is the voice of my well-beloved Cant. 2.8 Behold he cometh leaping by the Mountains skipping by the Hills My well-beloved is like a Roe or Hart. He came flying on the wings of the Wind he out-leapt Gabriel the Archangel and came to the Virgin before him by the Testimony of the Angel himself Luk. 1.27 Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee Behold Gabriel left Christ in Heaven but finds him in the Womb How so Volavit praevolavit super pennas vontorum he flew and out-flew him on the wings of the wind he sent his Messenger but like Ahinoaz got before him Will you see his Jumps He lept from Heaven into the Womb from the Womb to
serveth his Servant The onely true freedom is to serve the Lord For Godliness with Contentment is great Gain saith the Apostle 1 Tim. 6.6 yea it is profitable unto all things saith he having promise of the life which now is of that which is to come 1 Tim. 4.8 How then can you justify or affirm it to be a vain needless thing to spend this time in the publick Worship and Service of God namely in the duties of Piety and exercises of Religion in hearing of the Word in offering up Prayers Praises to God celebrating it lauding his holy and glorious Name with Psalms and Hymns and spiritual Songs singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord Eph. 5.19 20. giving thanks alwaies for all things unto God and the Father in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ And especially and above all things giving thanks for this one thing I mean that inestimable benefit and unspeakable gift which God bestowed upon the World at this time And me thinks to this end and purpose we may very well encourage and stirr up our selves with the words of David and say as he doth Psal 69.31 32. I will praise the name of God with a Song and magnify it with thanksgiving this also shall please the Lord better than a Bullock which hath horns and hoofs yea this shall be as precious and odoriferous in his Nostrils and no less pleasing and acceptable in his sight than that right costly Spikenard which was spent to anoint our Saviour's feet withall although it be said of that That the whole House wherein our Saviour was at that time was filled and perfumed with the odour of the Oyntment Joh. 12.3 But the Reasons you alledge to prove it to be a vain and needless thing to observe this day are in the next place to be examined and considered the first whereof is this as you affirm it because God hath set apart a Sabbath the Lord's-day for this purpose to meditate upon God's Love in redeeming the World and this seems to be an indifferent good one yet you know or at the least cannot but know that the Sabbath or the Seventh day was at the first ordained sanctified and set apart onely in remembrance of the World's Creation as it appears in that passage or Conclusion of the fourth Commandment Exod. 20. For in six daies the Lord made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is Wherefore the Lord blessed the Seventh day and hallowed it For this Commandment is hedged in on every side lest we should break out from observing it with a Caveat and speciall Memorandum before it Remember c. and with two Reasons after one drawn from the Equity of the Law and the other taken from the Law-giver's or the Law-maker's own Example Six daies shalt thou labour As if God should speak thus If I permit thee six whole daies to follow thine own business thou mayest well afford me one onely for my own Service but six daies shalt thou labour and do all thine own work therefore hallow the Seventh in doing my work Six daies shalt thou labour whereupon both Reverend Calvin and that learned Gentleman B. Babington who was once Bishop of this Diocesse a man of no mean Note but of good Report both for Life and Learning do observe That these Words Six daies shalt thou labour c. are a permission or a remission of God's right who might challenge all rather than an absolute Commandment For as Judicious Perkins hath also delivered it in his Golden Chaine for a sound Orthodoxal and undeniable Thesis Catenâ aureâ cap. 13 The Church upon just occasion may separate some week daies also to the Service of the Lord and rest from Labour Joel 2.15 Blow the Trumpet in Zion sanctify a Fast call a solemn Assembly And as daies of publick Fasting for some great Judgment so daies of publick Rejoycing for some great Benefit are not unlawfull but exceeding commendable yea necessary And you cannot in Modesty and I hope you will not for Shame deny this to be the Truth for besides the ordinary Sabbath among the Jews they had their Sabbaths and their new Moons and appointed Feasts yea Almighty God himself ordained in the old Testament divers and sundry Feasts to put his People in mind of his great Benefits bestowed upon them Amongst the rest there were three solemn Festivals every year namely the Passover the Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles as we read in the 16th of Deuteronomy The Passover was instituted in remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt's bondage Pentecost in remembrance of the Law given in Mount Sinui The Feast of Tabernacles in remembrance of Israel's dwelling in Tents forty years in the Wilderness Now as Hemingius observes in his Postil dom 1. post Epiph. instead of those three Jewish Feasts our Christian Church which may challenge as much Liberty as the Jewish if not more hath substituted Christmas in honour of Christ's Incarnation Easter in honour of Christ's Resurrection and Whitsuntide in honour of Christ's confirmation of the Gospel by sending unto us the Holy Ghost at that time So that we say according as St. Austin saith in his 108 Epist. cap. 1 Celebrantes Anniversariâ solemnitate Pascha reliquasque Christianas diêrum Festivitutes non observamus tempora sed quae illis significantur temporibiu i.e. In celebrating Easter and other Christian Feasts we do not so much observe the times as the things that are represented and signified unto us at those times If then it be granted as it cannot be denied according to your words that God hath set apart a Sabbath which is our Christian Sabbath and is called the Lord's Day because the Lord rose from death to life on that Day and that on this day in that respect we are to meditate on God's Love in redeeming the World if we must do this once every week in an ordinary course how much more may the Church and Spouse of Christ appoint and set apart one day in the year after an extraordinary manner to meditate and muse and think on his Love in redeeming her from the hands of all her Enemies for so indeed the holy Priest Zacharias tells us in his Song called Benedictus That this was the main End of our Redemption Luk. 1.74 that we being delivered out of the hands of our Enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the daies of our Life Whereupon I infer That if we must serve him all the daies of our life as he may justly challenge and require it at our hands in regard he hath redeemed us How much more ought we to meditate on his Love not onely once a week but also once in every year praise his most Holy Name after a more speciall and singular manner For at this time especially and particularly it may be said of Him as the Psalmist doth Psal 111.9 He sent Redemption unto his People He