Selected quad for the lemma: life_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
life_n	aaron_n	blossom_n	rod_n	58	3	9.0447	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60477	Christian religion's appeal from the groundless prejudices of the sceptick to the bar of common reason by John Smith.	Smith, John, fl. 1675-1711.	1675 (1675)	Wing S4109; ESTC R26922	707,151	538

hasts to the City to buy an Altar orders his men to dig a place where he might erect it they digging twenty foot deep find there an old Altar with this Inscription To Dis and Proserpina The Father returning from the City sacrificeth upon that Altar to those Infernal Deities and three nights together answering the number of his late sick but now recovered Children makes Funeral Banquets to the Gods with Songs and Dances With what strange obscenities those Games were celebrated is more obvious than that it needs be related It is sufficient to evince the Diabolicalness of those seeming Miracles and therefore only seeming that they manifestly tended towards the erecting of the Worship of infernal Fiends to the robbing the one Supreme God of that honour that 's his peculiar due and to the introducing of most barbarous Immoralities into the VVorld And therefore being Seals set to a Law directly thwarting that Law of God writ on the hearts of all men if they had more exactly counterfeited the Scal of Heaven than they did may easily be deprehended to be nothing else but feigned Miracles § 3. This should have at least awaken'd the VVorld to a more scrupulous inspection and prying into them and to have weighed them with those Sel●s which were set to the contrary Doctrine In comparison with which they would have been found if not lighter than vanity yet at least wanting many grains weight of real Miracles that is productions by the God of Nature above the power of Nature and beside its ordinary Course I insert this last clause into the description of a Miracle to distinguish it from the Effects of ordinary Providence which though they proceed from infinite Power yet are not Miracles but issue from the natural order of Conversion Mutation and Mutability of Bodies The water saith St. Austin de Trinit lib. 3. is poured ordinarily upon the earth but when at the Prayer of Elias after so long a serenity when there was no appearance of a cloud it was made to fall this was the immediate effusion of Divine Power God ordinarily makes the voyce of his Thunder to be heard and sends out the Lightning from the bright Cloud but when on Mount Sinai after an unusual manner those thundering voyces were sent forth which did not make a confused din but articulately sounded forth the VVill of God this was miraculous who draws moisture by the root of the Vine to the Clusters and by degrees ripens the Grapes but God who giveth the increase while Man Plants and VVaters But when at our Lord's beck VVater was turn'd into VVine by an unusual celerity he must be a fool with a witness who denies that to be a witness of a divine Power in him who commanded and it was done Earth is the common Matter for the bringing forth and nourishing of all Plants and of all Bodies of Animals and who produceth these things from the Earth but he that said to the earth bring forth But when of a suddain he turn'd the same Matter out of Moses his Rod into a Serpent and back again out of that Serpent into a Rod immediately and in an instant he wrought a Miracle the things indeed were changable but this change of them was unusual Who but God cloaths the Shrubbs with Leaves and Blossoms But when the Rod of Aaron blossom'd the divinity did after a sort discourse with doubting Humanity Who is he that giveth life to every living thing that 's born but he that gave life to that Serpent of Aaron for an hour Who restored to Bodies when they were dead their Souls but he that animates flesh in the Mothers Womb which is born to die of the same common Matter which subsists in the Elements God produceth in time or ex tempore a Ram or a Dove who are of the same fleshy vigour at their coming in and going out of the World whether they were made in an instant or by degrees they are not of different constitutions only that which was produced ex tempore appeared after an unusual manner but when those Creatures are brought forth by a kind of continued Flux of sliding and remaining things passing out of secret into open light and out of light into obscurity in the usual road they are called natural which same Creatures when they are thrust in upon us for our admonition by an unusual mutability are called Wonders 2. And yet it is not every unusual Conflux of those primordial seminal Causes towards the production of a thing into being that makes a Miracle for as St. Austin observes upon the story of the Aegyptian Magicians Ex. 7. de Trin. 3. cap. 8. there are certain seminal Causes hid in corporeal things through all the Elements of the World which Daemons may pick out more easily than the cunningest Gold-finer can single parings of Gold out of heaps of Sand into one Mass and make up into strange Effects and of them produce new Species of things in a trice Omnis spiritus ales est momento ubique sunt volocitas divinitus creditus quia substantia ignoratur Terapol 22. But it is farther requisite as I have exprest in the first Clause of the Description that it be a production beside the Order of whole created Nature such as cannot be educ'd out of the active Powers implanted in the Elements nor their natural passive Powers whereby they are made receptible of any form by natural Motion Aquinas sum 1. quest 115. 2. Praeter virtutes activas naturales potentias passivas quae ordinantur ad hujusmodi virtutes activas But out of a bare obediential Possibility or Non-resistency of the Creature whereby it throws it self at Gods feet and becomes pliable in the hand of Omnipotencie to embrace any shape he is pleas'd to mould it into by an act of Power equivalent to that of creating and educing forms out of the first Abyss of inform Matter Alensis sum 2. quest 42. art 5. memb 5. ad opera miraculosa possibilitas tantùm secundùm obedientiam creaturae de quo Deus potest facere quod vult est possibilitas passiva Briefly and plainly proper Miracles exceed Nature in a threefold degree 1. As to the Substance of the Fact such are the Glorification of the Body the Retrogradation of the Sun c. 2. As to the Subject wherein it is wrought such are the restoring Life to the Dead giving Sight to the blind c. Nature can cause Life but not in a dead Body can give Sight but not to one that 's blind for there cannot be a natural recess from a total Privation to an Habit. 3. As to the Manner and Order of working such is the restoring of Lame the healing of Sick the multiplying of Bread Oyl c in an unusual course on a suddain without applying natural Causes c. To the first of these Degrees the Pagan VVorld never so much as pretended To the second none ever attain'd who pretended to act in

apply themselves forthwith to the Guards at every Gate to the Watchmen that went up and down the City with a Saw ye not heard ye not can ye tell no tydings why was not Jerusalem all in an uproar at the news How easily might the Discipies have been taken in the manner who by the Soldiers own confession could not be gone far before they awoke for they had not time to shut the Cabinet after they had stoln the Jewel to roll the stone to the Sepulchres mouth again after they had taken out the Corps which certainly they would have done had they not been prevented on purpose to hide from the Soldiers so certain an indication of the removal of the Body till they were got out of their reach It had been worth the while to have turn'd every stone to find whither the Disciples had convey'd it that they might have laid it forth to open view of the people to affront the Apostles preaching of the Resurrection But the proud are robbed they have slept their sleep as their own Prophes in a holy scorn and derision of them had foretold and in the hands of the mighty there is found nothing Nothing but this palpably feigned Tale can be invented to prejudice the truth of Christ's Resurrection by a Council of the subtilest and most implacable enemies Christs name ever had and that after whole nights plotting upon their pillow for they suspected Christ would rise from the dead what to do what to say in case their fears should come to pass yea after comparing notes and taking counsel together Had they so drain'd their heads of devilish policy in compassing Christs Death as they could invent nothing to disprove his Resurrection by but this pitiful shift as Euphranor bestow'd so much art in carving the Image of Neptune as he could not tell how to go to work with the other Gods I begin now less to wonder at the observation I am upon than I did when I first took it up It seemed strange to me that Gospel-history should pass through so many Ages so currently as not to meet with the least rational Contradiction as to any Clause or Tittle of it from any of those millions of desperate enemies it hath met with all along in its passage down to us save only in this case But I see in this very case the Devils good will to oppose it especially in this Article of the Resurrection this being that wherein Christ triumphed over him and we in Christ 'T is Christ that dyed yea rather that rose from the dead is the acme of the Apostles glorying And his want of skill or power or heart to oppose it ever since Christ triumphed so gloriously over him and his Instruments in this Debate about his Resurrection as no man how great soever his enmity was against it would so far under value his own Reputation as to hazard it in gainsaying the Reports of the Gospel So that this little Stone ever since it was cut out of the Mountain has not met with any contradiction that could put it to a stop but what it has with ease run over I would not be too peremptory in affirming what hath not been done there may be more Antagonists against our Religion than I have read but this I may safely say that after some considerable enquiry and most serious perusal of all the ancient Authors opposing Christianity that I could compass a sight off I have not read nor heard of one person who offered to assert himself an Eye-witness of any one thing contrary to the Evangelical Story § 2. These Testimonies of Adversaries are sufficient to evince the Truth of the delivery and though the impossibility of the Apostles either deceiving or being deceived which hath been demonstrated in the first and second Book does manifestly evince that they delivered nothing but the Truth yet that the Atheists mouth may for ever be stopt I shall ex abundanti produce the Testimonies of strangers and enemies for the proof of the Truth of the things delivered There is we see no Comparison betwixt the Allegations of Plaintiff and Defendant Their exceptions are to our Evidences as the dust upon the Ballances to the weight in the Scales lighter than vanity Were it a drawn match betwixt us were the Scales equally ballanced the weight of the Testimony of By-standers of persons that did not interest themselves in the quarrel as it relates to Religion but nakedly record the great Emergencies of the World as Historians especially of such of them as in point of Religion side with our Adversary will add over weight to our Scale and cast the ballance on our side so irrecoverably as it shall not be in the power of Scepticism it self by injecting Queries to pull down the other Scale or with all the doubts it can raise to with-hold its assent to the indubitable Truth of our Evangelist in those things that are hardest to be believed and of that importance as the belief of them necessarily inforceth and demonstrateth the Truth of the rest of their Histories Josephus a Jew and a Priest of Aaron's Order as himself informs us in the History of his own life in that part of his Jewish Antiquities for the truth whereof he appeals against the Exceptions of one Justus a bold lying Pamphleter to the Roman Records in the custody of Vespasian and King Agrippa that Agrippa who was so zealous of the Law as he wish'd he might no longer live than he might be serviceable towards the promoting of the Jewish Religion and therefore fell down dead at Caligula's feet when he perceived him inexorably set against the Jews for refusing to erect his Statue in their Temple Philo Legatione ad Caium And if the Testimony of such an Author confirm'd by such Evidences in the custody of so great an enemy to our Religion be not sufficient to prove the Truth of it in those parts of it it hath relation to what will satisfie Now this Josephus Jud. antiq lib. 18. cap. 9. relates the whole History of John Baptist exactly in the tenour of the Evangelists thus Herod putting away his own Wife the Daughter of Aretas the King of Arabia and taking from his Brother yet living his Wife Herodias had not long after War with Aretas in which Battle Herod's host utterly perished after which for Herodias her sake and through her ambition he was deprived of his Kingdom and with her banish'd to Vienna in France What manner of man doth this speak the Baptist to have been in the opinion of the people when they impute Herod's mishap to the murthering of him rather than the Sanhedrim reputed sacred persons or his own Children a cruelty more than salvage against which Barbarities though Josephus declaims yet he does not impute to them Herod's falling into the displeasure of God but to his beheading John lib. 16. cap. ult and his following the counsel and humours of Herodias 18. 9. wherein he had the