Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	put_v	spirit_n	stony_a	3,973	5	11.7036	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75307	A treatise concerning religions, in refutation of the opinion which accounts all indifferent· Wherein is also evinc'd the necessity of a particular revelation, and the verity and preeminence of the Christian religion above the pagan, Mahometan, and Jewish rationally demonstrated. / Rendred into English out of the French copy of Moyses Amyraldus late professor of divinity at Saumur in France.; Traitté des religions. English.	Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.	1660 (1660)	Wing A3037; Thomason E1846_1; ESTC R207717	298,210	567

face of the World then if they all kept the same equal and uniform tract So without doubt there appears a greater Providence in the conduct of so many Nations so diversified by various sorts of Laws and Governments Monarchical Aristocratical Democratical and mixt each according to its peculiar genius all which nevertheless conspire to the glory of one and the same God and aspire to the atchievment of one and the same hope then if they were all modell'd and policyed according to the same constitutions Besides that God being willing that Christians should be people of free courage and erected to that honest liberty which is worthy of generous and noble souls it ha's pleased him that men should exercise the actions of Justice and virtue no otherwise then by following the suggestions of a nature almost restored by so excellent a Religion to its primitive integrity so that every one should be a Law unto himself It is true that a good part of the Nations which in these dayes make profession of the Christian Name do not shew that a doctrine so heavenly ha's been efficacious to cleanse the vitiosity of nature and repress the disorder of their passions so that there may seem need of more Laws to prevent frauds and injuries But this is the corruption of these dregs of Ages And he that would know what Christian charity and the uprightness of those that have embrac'd this Law is must not consider it such as it is at the present time but in the first Ages of the Church As for the Ceremonial Law 't is the Christian Religion alone that teaches us to understand the use of it by manifesting the en● to which it aimed For by that we are instructed that the whole structure of the Tabernacle and all the Oeconomy of the service which was performed therein by external and sensible things did refer to spiritual verities and virtues So that as much as the knowledge of divine mysteries and admirable doctrines transcends things obvious to sense by so much is the Christian Doctrine and the fruits produced by it more excellent then the Mosaical Worship It would be too long to allegorise all that pertains to it the matter will be evident by two or three examples There were two eminent Sacraments Circumcision and the Paschal Lambe To take them according to the construction of the Jews what other signification had they but onely to separate the people of the Jews and to discriminate them from other Nations and be a commemoration of their deliverance out of Egypt and the death of the First-born The one was a token imprinted in the flesh of a Covenant that seem'd to regard onely the body and the other a memorial of a deliverance meerly temporal Now we have learnt from the Christian Religion that the First was instituted to represent the need we stood in that this corrupt nature of ours which we derive from our fathers by ordinary generation should be retrenched if we would have part in the spiritual Covenant with God and the Second to be a type of him of whom it was said He was lead like a Lamb to the slaughter and whose blood and death secured our souls from the dreadful and universal destruction to which otherwise they were obnoxious And in this we do no more but follow the traces which themselves have hereof in the Prophets but could not discern To this purpose is their speaking of and exhorting to the circumcision of the heart as in contempt of that which was made in the flesh and also that of Moses's diligent injunction to sprinkle the blood of the Paschal Lambe upon the posts and tressell of the house and that it should be a perpetual institution in their generations For what virtue had the blood of a Lamb to divert the sword of an Angel and to warrant the houses of the Israelites from the calamity of others There was moreover prescrib'd by it several washings and purifications for the vessels and utensils of the Tabernacle houses and garments infected with any pollution for men and women seised on by some natural infirmity things which were accounted unclean if all these mysteries were not solicitously observed The Gospel hath taught us that all this represents true sanctification which cleanses the corrupt appetites of man and purifies his conscience And truly otherwise to what end or benefit served all these washings if they did not design something else Or why should corporeal and naturally inevitable infirmities such as the Lunar flux of women debarre them from communion with God and his Tabernacle but onely as figuring those voluntary ones of the conscience In this also we have the authority of their Prophets It is said in Ezekiel chap. 36.25 I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your Idols will I cleanse you But how A new heart will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you an heart of flesh And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes c. Now by how much piety and the internal virtue of the soul is better then the cleanness of the body so much is the recommendation and doctrine of the one more excellent then the observation of the other But this appears remarkably in the principal part of the Ceremonial Law namely in the Sacrifices For the death of beasts being as we intimated formerly incapable to make propitiation for sins and yet it being a thousand times expressed in the Law that those victimes were appointed for propitiation what remains but that they were destinated as types for the representation of a Sacrifice which in truth made real and sufficient propitiation for offenses And indeed what else could the Prophet Isaiah have referr'd to when he said chap. 53.6 All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all He was brought as a Lambe to the slaughter and as a sheep before the Shearers is dumbe so he opened not his mouth Especially since the blood of Bulls and Goats had no virtue for the purification of souls and yet the High Priest entred every year into the Holy of Holies with blood in the presence of the Arke of the Lord as if he had gone to offer satisfaction for the sins committed by the People what had this been but a vain and empty ceremony in case it did not typifie One who in the quality of great and Soverain Priest entred into the presence of God in the Heavens with real satisfaction for the sins of men Truly the resemblance is admirable Onely once a year a period of time in which the world seems to exist a new grow up wax old and terminate its duration by the revolution and succession of the four seasons

of it is accompanied with an evitable curse conscience which checks all men for sin suggests to them that either there must be some change in Religion as to this regard to become capable of salvation or that Religion was instituted not out of a designe to save but to curse and destroy They will say perhaps that there are promises of mercy mingled here and there in this Law for those that shall repent of their sins whereof their conscience convinces them And I grant it Miserable had they been if it had not been so For how could they have appeased the disquiets of their conscience But I say the promises of mercy to penitents do not belong to the Contract establish'd between God and them according to which he promised life to those that kept it and denounced a curse to those that should transgress it in the least clause For how can one and the same Covenant be capable of two such contrary clauses Cursed is whosoever shall not observe this Law in all points and Mercy it promised to those that repent of the transgressions which they commit What is repenting but returning to be a good man And what is to be a good man but to observe this Law Therefore Repentance is an observing the Law after a transgression I say an observing it inasmuch as the Repentance be good and durable Whence these two propositions will be found contradictory in one and the same Contract Cursed is whosoever abideth not in all the things of this Law to do them and Whosoever does not abide in all things of this Law is not therefore accursed provided he does not alwayes persevere in his transgression but at length repent of it Now it is not consentaneous to the Wisdom of God to contract an alliance of so repugnant parts But further There will not be onely a contradiction in the denouncing of the Curse but also in the promise of reward For observe how the Law speaks Do these things and thou shalt live that is Observe this Law in all points and thou shalt have life for thy salary of observing it So that he that obtains Life by the Law obtains it by virtue of his observation thereof as a recompense Now Life and the Curse are so oppos'd that he that ha's not life falls into the curse and on the contrary he that is delivered from the curse is instated in the injoyment of life As he that is in health or in the light is thereby exempt from diseases and darkness and contrarily he that is sick or in darkness is necessarily depriv'd of health and light The injoyment or sense of the one consisting in the privation of the other If therefore the same Law says Repent and thou shalt obtain mercy seeing mercy implyes deliverance from the Curse deserved and deliverance from the curse is nothing but the injoyment of life it will follow that by the same contract life will be obtain'd as a recompense of the observation of the Law and nevertheless be a favour too in regard of mercy Which are things directly repugnant and cannot be reconcil'd together These promises therefore belong to another Covenant different from that which saies Do these things and Cursed is he c. and they were the seeds of that other Law which was to succeed in the place of the ancient one and sufficient to bring penitents to salvation in that time and intitle them to Life not by virtue of observation of the Law but through pure mercy yet such as were to be more clearly and abundantly revealed And let them but remark a little what their own Prophet David saies in the 32 Psalme Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guilt When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long Because day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moisture is turned into the drought of Summer I have acknowledged my sin unto thee and mine iniquity have I not hid I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou forgavest the punishment of my sin I appeal to themselves whether this be the language of a man that seeks the quiet of his conscience in those words of the Law Do these things and thou shalt live For the peace of conscience ariseth from the hope of life But when he looks towards the Law he is desperate and hath no peace in his soul His satisfaction is in the forgiveness of his sins and therefore in the assurance of mercy And yet this was David a man according to God's own heart that spoke thus If therefore such a man as he did not obtain life by virtue of this contract Do these things what other dares claim a right upon such terms If no man obtaines the same upon that account is it not necessary that some other Covenant succeed namely that of mercy and grace in the room of that which was ineffectual But we prosecute this too far Let them hear God himself in the 31. Chapter of Jeremy vers 31. Behold the days come saith the Lord that I will make a new Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah Not according to the Covenant that I made with their Fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt which my Covenant they brake although I was an husband to them saith the Lord. But this shall be the Covenant which I will make with the house of Israel After those days saith the Lord I will put my Law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying Know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them saith the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more Who sees not that he distinguishes the Covenants by these two things First that he will give them the grace to violate the New no more which he did not under the Old And secondly that he will pardon under the New the transgressions of the Old which under it he did not nor could the denunciation of the curse annexed thereunto being irrevocable And what can be said more Does not God in promising a New Law foretell the abrogation of the first And why should he term this Old if it ought to be perpetual since perpetual things never wax old age being a tendency to an end till the thing growing old comes to be to tally extinguish'd But whereunto then serv'd this Law if none could obtain salvation by it Truely as Ceremony was a preparation to that which was to succeed and to give the Israelites some taste and knowledge of it as in