Selected quad for the lemma: life_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
life_n	blood_n	flesh_n	meat_n	9,640	5	9.2298	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A31408	Antiquitates apoitolicæ, or, The history of the lives, acts and martyrdoms of the holy apostles of our Saviour and the two evangelists SS. Mark and Lvke to which is added an introductory discourse concerning the three great dispensations of the church, patriarchal, Mosiacal and evangelical : being a continuation of Antiquitates christianæ or the life and death of the holy Jesus / by William Cave ...	Cave, William, 1637-1713.; Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667. Dissuasive from popery.	1676 (1676)	Wing C1587; ESTC R12963	411,541	341

from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Job twice speaks of in one Chapter the judged iniquity which the Jews expound and we truly render an iniquity to be punished by the Judges The seventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the member of any live-creature that is as God expresses it in the Precept to Noah they might not eat the bloud or the flesh with the life thereof Whether these Precepts were by any solemn and external promulgation particularly delivered to the Ante-deluvian Patriarchs as the Jews seem to contend I will not say for my part I cannot but look upon them the last only excepted as a considerable part of Nature's Statute-law as comprizing the greater strokes and lineaments of those natural dictates that are imprinted upon the souls of Men. For what more comely and reasonable and more agreeable to the first notions of our minds than that we should worship and adore God alone as the Author of our beings and the Fountain of our happiness and not derive the lustre of his incommunicable perfections upon any Creature that we should entertain great and honourable thoughts of God and such as become the Grandeur and Majesty of his being that we should abstain from doing any wrong or injury to another from invading his right violating his priviledges and much more from making any attempt upon his life the dearest blessing in this World that we should be just and fair in our transactions and do to all men as we would they should do to us that we should live chastely and temperately and not by wild and extravagant lusts and sensualities offend against the natural modesty of our minds that Order and Government should be maintained in the World Justice advanced and every Man secured in his just possessions And so suitable did these Laws seem to the reason and understandings of Men that the Jews though the most zealous People under Heaven of their Legal Institutions received those Gentiles who observed them as Proselytes into their Church though they did not oblige themselves to Circumcision and the rest of the Mosaick Rites Nay in the first Age of Christianity when the great controversie arose between the Jewish and Gentile-Converts about the obligation of the Law of Moses as necessary to salvation the observation only of these Precepts at least a great part of them was imposed upon the Gentile-Converts as the best expedient to end the difference by the Apostolical Synod at Jerusalem 4. BUT though the Law of Nature was the common Law by which God then principally governed the World yet was not he wanting by Methods extraordinary to supply as occasion was the exigencies and necessities of his Church communicating his mind to them by Dreams and Visions and other ways of Revelation which we shall more particularly remark when we come to the Mosaical Oeconomy Hence arose those positive Laws which we meet with in this period of the Church some whereof are more expresly recorded others more obscurely intimated Among those that are more plain and obvious two are especially considerable the prohibition for not eating bloud and the Precept of Circumcision the one given to Noah the other to Abraham The prohibition concerning bloud is thus recorded every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you but flesh with the life thereof which is the bloud thereof shall you not eat The bloud is the vehiculum to carry the spirits as the Veins are the chanels to convey the bloud now the animal spirits give vital heat and activity to every part and being let out the bloud presently cools and the Creature dies Not flesh with the bloud which is the life thereof that is not flesh while it is alive while the bloud and the spirits are yet in it The mystery and signification whereof was no other than this that God would not have Men train'd up to arts of cruelty or whatever did but carry the colour and aspect of a merciless and a savage temper lest severity towards Beasts should degenerate into fierceness towards Men. It 's good to defend the out-guards and to stop the remotest ways that lead towards sin especially considering the violent propensions of humane nature to passion and revenge Men commence bloudy and inhumane by degrees and little approaches in time render a thing in it self abhorrent not only familiar but delightful The Romans who at first entertained the People in the Amphitheatre only with wild Beasts killing one another came afterwards wantonly to sport away the Lives of the Gladiators yea to cast Persons to be devoured by Bears and Lions for no other end than the divertisement and pleasure of the People He who can please himself in tearing and eating the Parts of a living Creature may in short time make no scruple to do violence to the Life of Man Besides eating bloud naturally begets a savage temper makes the spirits rank and fiery and apt to be easily inflamed and blown up into choler and fierceness And that hereby God did design to bar out ferity and to secure mercy and gentleness is evident from what follows after and surely your bloud of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it and at the hand of Man at the hand of every Man's brother will I require the life of man whoso sheddeth Man's bloud by Man shall his bloud be shed The life of a Beast might not be wantonly sacrificed to Mens humours therefore not Man 's the life of Man being so sacred and dear to God that if kill'd by a Beast the Beast it self was to die for it if by man that man's life was to go for retaliation by man shall his bloud be shed where by man we must necessarily understand the ordinary Judge and Magistrate or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jews call it the lower Judicature with respect to that Divine and Superiour Court the immediate judgment of God himself By which means God admirably provided for the safety and security of Man's life and for the order and welfare of humane society and it was no more than necessary the remembrance of the violence and oppression of the Nephilim or Giants before the Floud being yet fresh in memory and there was no doubt but such mighty Hunters men of robust bodies of barbarous and inhumane tempers would afterwards arise This Law against eating bloud was afterwards renewed under the Mosaick Institution but with this peculiar signification for the life of the flesh is in the bloud and I have given it to you upon the Altar to make an atonement for your souls for it is the bloud that maketh an atonement for the soul that is the bloud might not be eaten not only for the former reason but because God had designed it for particular purposes to be the great Instrument of Expiation and an eminent type of the Bloud of the Son of God who was to die as the great expiatory Sacrifice for

God in this or rewarded by him in another World This controversie was first started at Antioch a place not more remarkable for its own greatness than the vast numbers of Jews that dwelt there enjoying great immunities granted them by the Kings of Syria For after that Antiochus Epiphanes had destroyed Jerusalem and laid waste the Temple the Jews generally flocked hither where they were courteously entertained by his successors the spoils of the Temple restored to them for the enriching and adorning of their Synagogue and they made equally with the Greeks free-men of that City By which means their numbers encreased daily partly by the resort of others from Judaea partly by a numerous conversion of Proselytes whom they gained over to their Religion Accordingly Christianity at its first setting out found a very successful entertainment in this place And hither it was that some of the Jewish Converts being come down from Jerusalem taught the Christians that unless they observed Circumcision and the whole Law of Moses they could not be saved Paul and Barnabas then at Antioch observing the ill influence that this had upon the minds of men disturbing many at present and causing the Apostasie of some afterwards began vigorously to oppose this growing error but not able to conjure down this Spirit that had been raised up they were dispatched by the Church at Antioch to consult the Apostles and Governours at Jerusalem about this matter Whither being come they found the quarrel espoused among others by some Converts of the Sect of the Pharisees of all others the most zealous assertors of the Mosaick rites stifly maintaining that besides the Gospel or the Christian Religion it was necessary for all Converts whether Jews or Gentiles to keep to Circumcision and the Law of Moses So that the state of the controversie between the Orthodox and these Judaizing Christians was plainly this Whether Circumcision and the observation of the Mosaick Law or only the belief and practice of Christianity be necessary to Salvation The latter part of the question was maintained by the Apostles the former asserted by the Judaizing Zelots making the Law of Moses equally necessary with the Law of Christ and no doubt pretending that whatever these men might preach at Antioch yet the Apostles were of another mind whose sentence and resolution it was therefore thought necessary should be immediately known 5. WE are then next to consider what determination the Apostolick Synod at Jerusalem made of this matter For a Council of the Apostles and Rulers being immediately convened and the question by Paul and Barnabas brought before them the case was canvassed and debated on all hands and at last it was resolved upon by their unanimous sentence and suffrage that the Gentile Converts were under no obligation to the Jewish Law that God had abundantly declared his acceptance of them though strangers to the Mosaical Oeconomy that they were sufficiently secured of their happiness and salvation by the grace of the Gospel wherein they might be justified and saved without Circumcision or legal Ceremonies a yoke from which Christ had now set us free But because the Apostles did not think it prudent in these circumstances too much to stir the exasperated humour of the Jews lest by straining the string too high at first they should endanger their revolting from the Faith therefore they thought of some indulgence in the case S. James then Bishop of Jerusalem and probably President of the Council propounding this expedient that for the present the Gentile Converts should so far only comply with the humour of the Jews as to abstain from meats offered to Idols from bloud from things strangled and from fornication Let us a little more distinctly survey the ingredients of this imposition Meats offered to Idols or as S. James in his discourse stiles them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the pollution of Idols the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 properly denoting the meats that were polluted by being consecrated to the Idol Thus we read of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the LXX render it polluted bread upon God's Altar i. e. such probably as had been before offered to Idols So that these meats offered to the Idols were parts of those Sacrifices which the Heathens offered to their Gods of the remaining portions whereof they usually made a Feast in the Idol-Temple inviting their friends thither and sometimes their Christian friends to come along with them This God had particularly forbidden the Jews by the Law of Moses Thou shalt worship no other God lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and go a whoring after their Gods and do sacrifice unto their Gods and one call thee and thou eat of his sacrifice And the not observing this prohibition cost the Jews dear when invited by the Moabites to the Sacrifices of their Gods they did eat with them and bowed down to their Gods Sometimes these remaining portions were sold for common use in the Shambles and bought by Christians Both which gave great offence to the zealous Jews who looked upon it as a participation in the Idolatries of the Heathen Of both which our Apostle discourses elsewhere at large pressing Christians to abstain from Idolatry both as to the Idol-feasts and the remainders of the Sacrifice From the former as more immediately unlawful from the latter the Sacrificial meats sold in the Shambles as giving offence to weak and undiscerning Christians For though in it self an Idol was nothing in the world and consequently no honour could be done it by eating what was offered to it yet was it more prudent and reasonable to abstain partly because flesh-meats have no peculiar excellency in them to commend us to God partly because all men were not alike instructed in the knowledge of their liberty their minds easily puzled and their consciences entangled the Gentiles by this means hardned in their idolatrous practices weak brethren offended besides though these things were in their own nature indifferent and in a mans own power to do or to let alone yet was it not convenient to make our liberty a snare to others and to venture upon what was lawful when it was plainly unedifying and inexpedient From bloud This God forbad of old and that some time before the giving of the Law by Moses that they should not eat the flesh with the bloud which was the life thereof The mystery of which prohibition was to instruct men in the duties of mercy and tenderness even to brute beasts but as appears from what follows after primarily designed by God as a solemn fence and bar against murther and the effusion of humane bloud A Law afterwards renewed upon the Jews and inserted into the body of the Mosaick precepts From things strangled that is that they should abstain from eating of those Beasts that died without letting bloud where the bloud was not throughly drained from them a prohibition grounded upon the reason of the