Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	church_n	invisible_a	visible_a	3,670	5	9.2967	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56393	Reasons for abrogating the test imposed upon all members of Parliament, anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I A.B. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous : first written for the author's own satisfaction, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1688 (1688)	Wing P467; ESTC R5001	62,716	138

Sabbaths I am Iehovah your God turn ye not unto Idols nor make to your selves molten Gods I am the Lord your God. Levit. 26. 1 2. Ye shall make ye no Idols ye shall keep my Sabbaths Ezek. 20. 18 20. Walk ye not in the statutes of your Fathers nor defile your selves with your Idols and hollow my Sabbaths that are for a sign between you and me that you may know that I am Iehovah your God for their hearts went after their Idols so v. 24. they polluted my Sabbaths And as these Commands are so frequently joyned together so is the violation of them as if they could not be parted Ezek. 20. 16. They polluted my Sabbaths and their eyes were after their Fathers Idols And King Ahaz when he set up Idolatry he in Contempt turn'd the Covert for the Sabbath out of the House of the Lord. 1 Mac. 1. 44. And many of the People consented to the command of the King and sacrificed to Idols and prophaned the Sabbath So necessary was it for the observation of the Sabbath and the Worship of the true God to run the same Fate or stand and fall together because the Sabbath was instituted in memory of the Creation of the World by the true God and therefore the belief and observation of it was an open Defyance to all Idolatry as the Psalmist joyns them together All the Gods of the Heathens are Idols But the Lord made the Heavens And this is the distinctive Character that God hath given between himself the only true God and the Heathen Idols or Vanities The Gods that have not made the Heavens and the Earth shall perish from the Earth and from under the Heavens The Lord hath made the Earth by his Power he hath framed the Universe by his Wisdom and hath stretched out the Heavens by his Discretion Now the Observation of the Sabbath as instituted in honour of the invisible Creator of the visible or material World being the fundamental Article of Faith in the Jewish Church in opposition to Idolatry or giving the Worship of the supreme Deity to created Beings it is for that reason more frequently recited than any other Law and its Breach as severely punished as Idolatry it self the recital of this Command is almost half of the Law and the Prophets and the violation of it certain Death as a Crime of the same Nature with Idolatry it self So evident is it through the whole Series of sacred History that the Sabbath was instituted in opposition to Idolatry and that the Idolatry it was opposed to was the Worship of created Beings as the supreme uncreated Deity To conclude this Argument tho I designed to confine my self to the Testimony of Holy Scripture that is the only competent Witness in the case yet I find such a pregnant Passage cited out of St. Cyril of Alexandria to the same purpose with the Premises from his own Observation of the Train of Scripture History that it were great pity to rob the Reader of so fair an Authority After the Israelites says he left their own Country to sojourn in Egypt in process of time they lost all memory of their Ancestors and descent from the Line of Abraham so that their antient Customs being worn out by degrees and the Religion of their Forefathers disus'd they were at length debauched by conversation with the Egyptians to Idolatry and gave the worship of the supreme God to the Sun and under him to the Heavens Earth Moon Stars And therefore when God delivered them out of their Egyptian Bondage to bring them to the promised Land he peremptorily commands them to discard all their Egyptian Errors but because there was need of an evident sign by which they should as it were be forced to confess that Heaven was made by his Almighty Power and that the Sun Moon and Stars and all other Beings were the works of his hands he commands the Festival of the Sabbath as a Memorial and Imitation of himself and his work and therefore they that devote themselves to rest as their Creator rested by that acknowledge that all other things were the product of his Power and that is the natural design of the Sabbath Rest to affect them with a sense of the supreme Deity or Creator of all things In the second place a very great and considerable part of the Mosaick Law was enacted purely in opposition to the Old Heathen Rites and Customs Here I omit the Idolatry of the Zabii so much of late insisted upon by learned Men because I find no antient Footsteps of any such People in the World. The Mahometan Arabic Writers are the first that make any mention of them and their Divinity as the Arabians describe it is a meer Fanatick Rhapsody of Chaldaism or Astrologick Idolatry Iudaism or the History of the Patriarchs turned into Fables Gnosticism or the Worship of Demons and Angels Pythagorism or turning all things into Allegories and therefore must be of a much younger Date than Christianity The first time we read of them is in the Alchoran and Mahomet gives them that name of Zabii because they lay Eastward from Arabia for so the Word signifies Easterlings Or more probably from a Fanatick Imitation of the Old Testament that frequently and commonly styles the Heathen Idolaters by the Title of the men of the East i.e. the Chaldeans who were situated Eastward of Iudea After him we have no account of any such Nation as the Zabii till about Eight Hundred Years since For the Prophet and his barbarous Followers as they conquered destroyed all Monuments of Learning till being setled in Peace and Empire as is the manner of all Barbarians they betook themselves to the humour of Learning and translated Books out of other Languages not only Greek and Latin but of their Neighbour Nations into their own Tongue This is the most antient Account after all the noise that has been made of their extreme Antiquity that we have of any Zabian Writers so that setting that Modern Nation aside the Mosaick Rites were instituted in opposition to the more antient Idolatry of their Neighbour Nations particularly the Egyptians and the Canaanites of whom there was most danger by reason of their late conversation with the one and their new conversation with the other And therefore against these God arms them with a special Caution After the doings of the Land of Egypt wherein ye dwelt shall ye not do and after the doings of the Land of Canaan whether I bring you shall ye not do neither shall ye walk in their Ordinances This contrariety of the Jews to the Laws and Customs of all other Nations is made use of by Haman to King Ahasuerus to procure their Destruction Esther 3. 8. And Haman said unto King Ahasuerus there is a certain People scattered abroad and dispersed among the People in all the Provinces of thy Kingdom and their Laws are divers from all People neither keep they the Kings Laws

enough in the Cause by making a Noise upon these Two loud Engines they could at pleasure drown the Dispute Now ever since this Alteration of the State of the War between the Two Churches we hear little or nothing at all of the real Presence in the Cause but it is become as great a Stranger to the i.e. their Church of England as Transubstantiation it self but the whole matter is resolved into a meer Sacramental Figure and Representation and a Participation only of the Benefits of the Body and Blood of Christ by Faith. I know not any one Writer of that Party of Men that hath ever own'd any higher Mystery but on the contrary they state all the Disputes about the Eucharist upon Sacramentarian Principles and with them to assert the true reality of the Presence of our Saviour's Body and Blood in the Sacrament as naturally resolves it self into Transubstantiation as that does into Idolatry And the main Argument insisted upon by them is the natural Impossibility of the thing it self to the Divine Omnipotence which beside the prophane Boldness of prescribing Measures to God's Attributes in a Mystery that they do not comprehend 't is as appears by the Premises a Defiance to the Practice of all Churches who have ever acknowledged an incomprehensible Mystery not subject to the Examination of Humane Reason but to be imbraced purely upon the Authority of a Divine Revelation And therefore that ought to be the only matter of Dispute For if it be a Divine Revelation as all Christendom hath hitherto believed that determines the Case without any further Enquiry and if any Man will not be satisfied with that Authority he makes very Bold with his Maker And Men of those Principles would no doubt make admirable Work with the Definitions of Articles of Faith by the Four first general Councils But to let their new way of Arguing pass it is these Men that first set up Sacramentarian Principles in this Church and then blew them into the Parliament House raising there every Session continual Tumults about Religion and it is to their Caballing with the Members that we owe these new and unpresidented TESTS Perhaps to have their own Decrees and Writings established by Law and imposed upon the whole Nation as Gospel In short if they own a real Presence we see from the Premises how little the Controversie is between that and Transubstantiation as it is truly and ingeniously understood by all reformed Churches If they do not they disown the Doctrine both of the Church of England and the Church Catholick and then if they own only a figurative Presence and it is plain they own no other they stand condemned of Heresie by almost all Churches in the Christian World and if this be the thing intended to be set up as it certainly is by the Authors and Contrivers of it by renouncing Transubstantiation then the Result and Bottom of the Law is under this Pretence to bring a new Heresy by Law into the Church of England And yet upon this Foot I find the Controversie stands at this present Day between the Bishop of Rome or the Bishop of Condom on one part and little Iulian in the Back-shop with his Dragoons on the other part The Bishop establishes the Real Presence in Opposition to the Figurative His Answerer turns the whole Mystery into meer Type and Figure by seting up a figurative Interpretation of the Words of Institution and yet confesses it at the same time to be somewhat more than a Figure To this it is reply'd I would gladly know what that is which is not the thing it self but yet is more than a meer Figure of it To this it is answered That the Presence is Spiritual but yet Real but how a Corporeal Substance should have a real Spiritual Presence is a thing that requires more Philosophy to clear it up than Transubstantiation or in the Words of the Author himself We suppose it to be a plain Contradiction that Body should have any Existence but what alone is proper to a Body that is Corporeal This is their last Resolution of this Controversie that a true real Presence is a Contradiction and so I think is a real spiritual Presence of a bodily Substance This Scent the whole Chace follows and unanimously agree in this Cry That there is no Presence but either meerly Figurative and that shuts out all Reality and is universally condemned by all the Reformation or meerly Spiritual i.e. the present Effects and Benefits of the absent Body and Blood of Christ which hath been all along equally cashiered by all other Reformed Churches as the other grand Scandal of Zuinglianism Thus the London Answerer to the Oxford Discourses There can be no real Presence but either Figuratively in the Elements or Spiritually in the Souls of those who worthily receive them So Dr. St. All which the Doctrine of our Church implies by this Phrase is only a real Presence of Christ's invisible Power and Grace so in and with the Elements as by the faithful receiving of them to convey real and spiritual Effects to the Souls of Men. The Oxford Answerer to the Oxford Discourses allows no other real Presence but the virtual Presence that is the meer Effect So the popular Author of the Discourse against Transubstantiation makes no Medium between the meer figurative Presence and Transubstantiation so that all other Presence that is not meerly Figurative comes under the Notion of Transubstantiation Now the gentlest Character he is pleased to give of this Monsieur is this That the Business of Transubstantiation is not a Controversie of Scripture against Scripture or of Reason against Reason but of downright Impudence against the plain meaning of the Scripture and all the Sence and Reason of all Mankind But besides the intolerable Rudeness of the Charge against all the Learned Men of the Church of Rome as the worst of Sots and Ideots if there be no middle real Presence between Transubstantiation and the Figure he hath cast all the Protestant Churches into the same Condemnation of Sots and Fools But howsoever rash and preposterous it may be for Presons that believe the real Presence to abjure the Word Transubstantiation ye to determine any part of Divine Worship in the Christian Church to be in its own Nature Idolatry is inhumane and barbarous IDOLATRY is a Stabbing and Cut-throat Word its least Punishment is the greatest that can be both Death and Damnation and good Reason too when the Crime is no less than renouncing the true God that made Heaven and Earth Thus Exod. 22. 20. He that sacrificeth unto any God save unto the Lord or Iehovah only he shall be utterly destroyed Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy Bosom or thy Friend which is as thine own Soul entice thee secretly saying Let us go and serve other Gods which thou hast not known thou nor thy Fathers namely

the Father of Abraham and the Father of Nachor and they serv'd strange Gods. But when Abraham came into Canaan I find no Records that the Customs of his Country had pass'd the River but on the contrary evident Instances of their Knowledge of the true God as Creator of Heaven and Earth What can be more plain than the Story of Melchisedeck Priest of the most High God a Term appropriate in Scripture to the Supreme Deity in his blessing Abraham Blessed be Abraham of the most High God Creator of Heaven and Earth And when God consumed Sodom and Gomorrah with Fire from Heaven Idolatry is no where reckoned among the Causes and Provocations of that severe and unusual Judgment and had it been one of their crying Sins it would have been the loudest and so never have been omitted by the Sacred Historian And when Isaac was forced by Famine into the Country of the Philistines Abimelech their King entred into a Solemn and Religious Covenant with him of mutual Defence and Offence upon this Inducement that he was the Blessed of the Lord or the peculiar Favourite of Iehovah so that as long as himself and Isaac were of a side the Supreme Gods immediate mediate Providence would be engaged in his Protection The first plain Intimation we find of it in Palestine is in the History of Iacob after his Conversation with the Shechemites where upon his departure from that City by God's especial Command he builds an Altar at Bethel to God and commands his Family to put away their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Strange Gods. And from this time we read of nothing of this Nature till the Deliverance of the Children of Israel out of Egypt after they had been deteined there Four Hundred and Thirty Years according to the Hebrew or Two Hundred and Fifteen according to the Seventy the greatest part of which time was spent in Slavery and Bondage But at and after their Deliverance we hear of nothing else but Cautions against Idolatry or Worship of Strange Gods as if in that long Tract of Time and Misery they had lost the Tradition of the God of their Ancestors and by long conversation with the Egyptians had taken up their Masters Religion together with their Burdens and it was scarce possible to be otherwise for men in their poor condition after so long a Tract of Time than to take up the Religion in publick Practice Long custom and conversation naturally inures Men to the Manners of the Country but Slavery breaks Men to them And what could be expected from miserable People who spent all their days in carrying of Clay gathering Straw making Bricks and all Offices of Servility than that they should serve their Masters Gods as well as their Masters themselves And that this was their case is evident from the whole Series of the Story The first Discovery that the Almighty made of himself was to Moses in the Burning Bush where he tells us I am the God of thy Fathers the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob But this seems to be a New Language to Moses For he replys When I come unto the Children of Israel and shall say unto them the God of your Fathers hath sent me unto you and they shall say to me what is his Name or what God is he what shall I say unto them To this he is commanded to answer I am that I am hath sent you that is the only self existent Being that is the only Supreme Deity and God of your Fathers And for the truth and demonstration of this he refers both him and them to the following Miracles And when Moses was discouraged by the complaints of the People because of their severe Usage the Almighty gives him encouragement upon this powerful Motive I am Jehovah or I am the Lord who will deliver you with a strong Hand or stretched out Arm i.e. I am that Omnipotent self-existent Being and that shall be the proof of it the great Miracles that I will work for your Delivery And at the time of their Deliveranee he immediately institutes the Passover not only as a Memorial of the Thing but as I shall prove afterwards the strongest Bar against Idolatry But as soon as they sat down at the Foot of Mount Sinah which was their first place of Rest God's first Care was to make further provision against Idolatry where after a fearful and glorious Representation of his Presence he gives the Ten Commandments whereof the Four First are directly levell'd against Idolatry First He enjoyns the worship of Himself who by his Almighty Power had delivered them from their Egyptian Bondage In the next place He forbids them the Worship of all Idols i. e. as himself describes them The likeness or similitude of any thing that is in Heaven above or in the Earth beneath or in the Water under the Earth A plain and indeed logical Definition this that Idolatry is giving the Worship of the Supreme God to any created corporeal or visible Deity or any thing that can be represented by an Image which nothing but coporeal Beings can and to suppose such a Being the Supreme Deity is the only true and proper Idolatry And tho there may seem to be two sorts of it First either to Worship a material and created Being as the Supreme Deity Or Secondly to ascribe any corporeal Form or Shape to the Divine Nature yet in the Result both are but one for to ascribe unto the Supreme God any corporeal Form is the same thing as to Worship a created Being for so is every corporeal Substance This is I say the true and only Notion of Idolatry And all the Strange Gods mentioned in the Scripture are only some most glorious Pieces of the visible Creation as I shall prove at large from undeniable Testimonies And for this reason it was that the very Angels by whom this Affair was immediately transacted never made any appearance in any visible Shape but only in a Cloud or in a Glory to prevent the very Peril of Idolatry and therefore Moses in his dying and farewel Speech reminds them over and over that at Horeb they heard the Voice of God but saw no Similitude with this Application to them lest you corrupt your selves i. e. by believing that there can be any Similitude of the Supreme Godhead And as this is the literal and plain Sense of the two first Commandments so it seems to be the only Design of the Third and Fourth For the English of the Third if it were rightly translated runs thus Thou shalt not give the Name of the Lord thy God to a Vanity or Idol and so the Septuagint render it For the Word Vanity and Idol are Synonomous in Scripture because an Idol is a vain and empty Thing that represents nothing for when it is set up as the Symbol and Image of a Deity that is no Deity it is the Image of nothing as St. Paul