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A51303
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An exposition of the seven epistles to the seven churches together with a brief discourse of idolatry, with application to the Church of Rome / by Henry More ...
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More, Henry, 1614-1687.
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1669
(1669)
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Wing M2660; ESTC R7302
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134,158
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410
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trade of whoring still Behold I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation except they repent of their deeds Unlesse she repent I will certainly cast her into a bed of sicknesse and languishment for that bed of Adultery wherein she has entertained the Kings of the earth Her strength and glory shall be much diminished and her Paramours shall bewail the Calamity I shall bring upon her For there shall be of the Kings that shall hate the Whore shall make her desolate in their dominions and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire As it fell out in the late defection of whole Nations from her And I will kill her children with death That is either slay them with the sword of the Spirit and so make them dead as to her by their conversion to the truth or else kill them with a natural death such I mean as come against my true Church whether whole Armies or seditious Emissaries as has often happened since the Reformation And all the Churches shall know that I am he that searches the reins and hearts and will give unto every one of you according to his works That is it will be notoriously taken notice of in all Christendome how just my judgements are and that I deal not with Jezebel according to her fair pretenses and Titles who calls her self Holy Church and pretends all her cruelties and imposturous and Idolatrous Trumperies to be for my glory whenas they have run into all this degeneracy for their worldly Interest But mine eyes which are a flaming fire searching into the hearts and reins clearly see their abominable Hypocrisie and my feet like fine brasse that never goe out of the way of purity and justice will be sure to overtake them and doe due vengeance upon them I will reward every one according to his works 18. But unto you I say and unto the rest in Thyatira as many as have not this doctrine To you Pastours of my true Church in Thyatira and the rest which are your charge that hold not the Idolatrous doctrine or faith of the Thyatirian that is of the Roman Church And which have not known the depths of Satan as they speak that is which have not approved the deep mysteries as they speak of reason of State or of the Roman Religion such as murdering innocent men for the Interest of Holy Church Infallibility Transubstantiation and the like but I who search the heart and reins do apertly declare to be the depths of Satan they tending to nothing but to Luciferian Pride barbarous Persecutions and Murders and grosse imposture and Idolatry I will put upon you no other burden but that which ye have already hold fast untill I come I have already shew'd you my approbation of your wayes ver 19. and in that ye do not communicate with the Idolatrous Jezebel keep to where you are and stand out to the last let no Persecutions dismay you till I come in judgement against this Jezebel the same with the little Horn in Daniel which in the expiring of the time and times and half a time will certainly be judged 19. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end to him will I give power over the Nations That company of men those people that keep my works to the end to the last semi-time of the Seven they shall have power over the Pagan Christians they shall get them under and be no more domineered over by them And he shall rule them with a rod of Iron that is with sufficient power and strictnesse to keep them in subjection As the vessels of a Potter shall they be broken to shivers The stone shall smite the Image on the feet and break them to pieces That shall be at the long-run Even as I received of my father I in you and you in me you in me by vertue of the Power of my Spirit shall thus reign and I in you according as it is written I shall give thee the Heathen for thine inheritance the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron thou shalt dash them in pieces as a Potters vessel But this is something further off 20. And I will give him the morning star In the mean time and which is next to succeed I will give them the morning star that is a considerable dawning towards that greater Day of the illustrious reign of Christ upon earth in his Saints by his Spirit The Phosphorus to the glorious Sun-rise of the happy Millennium properly so called This intervall will be the same with that of the Vials which are accompanied with such a smoake As here the Promise which is to be performed in the next Succession of the Church and there continued is not expressed with that vigour as elsewhere where Christ in reference to his Kingdome is said to be the bright morning star here onely the morning star without the ornament of that Epithet The Kingdome of Christ therefore under the first Thunder may be said to be the morning star but under the second the bright morning star And it is observable that whereas in that other place he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may also have the signification of more early then was expected which exquisitely answers to the evert it falling out toward the fore-part of the last semi-time But these things are onely by the by He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches There is nothing new remarkable in this Epiphonema but the placing of it here after the whole Epistle which is a sign that all the Epistle is a Parable and is not onely meant of the Church in Thyatira in the Literal sense but that the condition and affairs of some other Church the truely Catholick and Apostolick Church in the Intervall defined are here prefigured and described Prophetically And that therefore the Promises are to be performed on this stage of the Earth as of their own nature they appear to be such that have a Political sense Which therefore therewithall assures us that such a tenour of Interpretation belongs to the three following Epistles because the Epiphonema is the close of every one of them And therefore we shall steer the course of our Interpretation accordingly CHAP. VII The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Church in Sardis 1. AND unto the Angel in the Church of Sardis write That Sardis was a City in Asia is manifest Ch. 1. And considered no otherwise then so does not at all illustrate the condition of this fifth Succession of the state of the Church But acknowledging here again a Paronomastical Allusion to Sarda the precious Stone as Grotius does or taking notice with Pliny that that Stone is so called for its first being found about
stage but if thou strivest so as to get the victory in the way I have instructed thee I will translate thee to that Heavenly Kingdome most naturally and properly so called where thou shalt sit down and drink of the fruit of the Vine in the Kingdome of my Father As I after I had overcome ascended up to Heaven into those glorious mansions and there sate down at the right hand of God so him that overcometh the Temptations and Incumbrances the Pleasures and Enticements of this lower world will I cause to sit down with me in the Heavenly places at the last Day Which Monition is the more seasonable by how much more near the approach of that great Day is For I shall come visibly to Judgement in the very next Thunder to the Siege of Gog and Magog when I will transform your vile bodies into the similitude of my glorious body that ye may be fit companions for me in Heaven for ever Behold I shew you a mystery Ye shall not all sleep yet ye shall all be changed that mortality may be swallowed up of life This is a great and stupendious Promise but thou art to consider that it is spoken by him that is the Amen the true and faithfull witnesse and the beginning of the Creation of God and therefore both will and can carry on all his design to the very end Amen 13. He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches From the Epiphonema coming here last as in all these four last Epistles one may haply raise this Objection as if this sense of the Promise immediately preceding it were not Politicall or Propheticall enough but merely Theologicall the Promise being to be performed in the other world and therefore not the proper object of Prophecy which concerns the affairs of the stage of this Earth And that this therefore is against our professed Rule But I answer that though the Promise of obtaining Heaven after this life upon the death of the body be merely a Theogicall Promise and of a thing more spiritual and invisible and not to be seen upon the face of this Earth yet this promise of obtaining Heaven at the Resurrection and general Day of Judgement it being the day of that great and visible Assizes wherein the Souls of the Saints shall appear in glorify'd bodies may well be ranged in the same order with the rest of the Promises immediately preceding the Epiphonemata of each Epistle and to be accomplished visibly in this life For the sense of the Promise in brief is this That as Christ after his Sufferings his Death and Passion ascended visibly into Heaven for Heaven is said to be the throne of God in the Scripture and so Heaven became also Christ's throne so those of Laodicea who upon the Mortification of their Lusts should attain to the state of life in the New birth should ascend visibly into Christ's throne that is into Heaven in the open view of them that should be left here on the Earth and in the inferiour Regions of the Air sentenced to that everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels This is a plain and obvious sense of this Promise and such as the placing of the Epiphonema requires and is in my judgement no mean Ratification of the true and Literal sense of that Article of our Faith touching the visible Resurrection and Glorification of our bodies and their ascension into the Heavenly Regions against such as would whiffle away all these Truths by resolving them into a mere moral Allegorie Thus consonant every way are the Interpretations of these Epistles both to themselves and to the Apostolick Truth CHAP. X. A Recapitulation of the main Evidences of the truth of this Mysticall or Propheticall Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia by way of Solution of Difficulties touching the said Epistles and their Circumstances otherwise hardly or not at all to be solved 1. AS in natural Hypotheses those are accounted truest that solve the Phaenomena of Nature the most naturally and easily and especially if such as are no otherwise solvible then upon the proposed Hypothesis so that meaning of Scripture I mean especially of any considerable portion thereof ought to be esteemed truest that can solve the most Difficulties that may be raised concerning the same or the Contexts precedent or subsequent thereto and if all still the more certain and if unsolvible otherwise there is still the more assurance of undeniable Demonstration Now how near this Mysticall or Propheticall Exposition of these Epistles approches to the clearnesse of this case I will leave to the Reader to judge after he has considered the Solutions of the Questions easily raised out of the Epistles themselves or the precedent Chapter and not easily answered nor at all satisfactorily at least most of them but upon the Hypothesis we have gone 2. As first If a man enquire why the Spirit of Prophecy after he has so expresly given notice that this Book of the Apocalypse is to shew unto his servants things that are to come and called it plainly a Book of Prophecies should start so unexpectedly from the Title and intended subject as to write no lesse then seven Epistles to certain Churches that have nothing considerable of Prophecy in them before he deliver any Prophecies properly so called but onely Promises and Comminations and that he should doe this with as great Pomp and as high a Preamble as he does when he begins so famous Prophecies as those of the seven Seals and the opened Book But according to our Hypothesis the Answer is easie viz. That though these seven Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia have a Literal sense yet they are also a Parable or Prophecy and of as high concern for both matter and extent of time they reaching from the beginning of the Church to the end of the world as the Prophecy of the Seals and opened Book and that they are ushered in with this great Pomp on purpose to give us notice thereof Secondly A man would be prone to enquire why the Spirit dictates Letters unto the Churches in Asia and not rather to the Churches in Europe Asia and Africk For certainly the Church had disspred it self into all these Quarters of the world by that time As if the Spirit of Truth were a respecter of persons For these are not the Letters of John but of the Holy Ghost But our Answer is ready at hand That for the significancy of the word Asia to comport also with the significancy of the names of the Seven Churches Asia alone was pitched upon But according to the Propheticall sense the true Catholick Church is writ unto under such distinct Conditions as she was to vary into unto the end of the world So that there is no Partiality nor Acception of Persons in this Thirdly If a man demand touching the order or precedency of these Seven