Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	elias_n	zeal_n	zealous_a	92	3	10.1933	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88141	Elias redivivus: a sermon preached before the honorable House of Commons, in the parish of Saint Margarets West minster, at the publike fast, March 29, 1643. By John Lightfoote, preacher of the Gospel at Bartholomew Exchange, London.	Lightfoot, John, 1602-1675.	1643 (1643)	Wing L2053; Thomason E99_11; ESTC R20324	33,230	56

was a man as may be guessed by his writings of a very shallow wit Yet was he the Author of the like error to most Ecclesiasticall men who cited this mans antiquity for the defence of their part as Irenaeus and whosoever else is of the same opinion with him I will not censure nor condemne the opinion but referre it to superiour examination onely this I cannot but say of it that I doe not remember that ever I heard or read of an opinion of so extreame and monstrous strangenesse that in so short a time hath gotten so great a beliefe and so large an entertainment and neither tongue or pen hath stirred against it It is our hope and prayer that once you may have liberty and leisure from the great rent in the whole peece of the State to looke upon the rippings in the seames of the Church that such opinions as this and others may be taken either by you or by your authority into examination before like Joab and Abishai the sons of Zerviah they grow too strong and defie a tryall The Spirit and power of Elias is held by some to meane but one and the same thing his powerfull Spirit So indeed sometime runneth the sense of the Hebrew stile As in that answer of our Saviour Joh. 14. 6. I am the way the truth and the life the scope of the question that occasioned it seemeth to call it to such a sense I am the true and the living way Others distinguish the meaning with the words and by the Spirit of Elias understand patience and tolerancy of persecution and by the power the prevalent and efficacious virtue of his ministration But we need not to goe farre for interpretations when either the words are of no great difficulty or what they be of will easily be explained by the Scripture it selfe By Elias his Spirit then are we to understand not his owne within him but the Spirit of the Lord or of Prophecy upon him And so his spirit is said to be upon John as Moses his spirit was upon the Elders and the spirit of the same Elias upon Elisha By the power of Elias upon the Baptist is not meant the power of miracles for John wrought none wheras Elias did many but his power of preaching for the conversion of many unto God So that whereas the ancient Prophets of the Law and among them Elias had a double power of the Spirit upon them To foretell things to come and to worke miracles so had John the first Prophet of the Gospell a double power but of another nature and a better He foretold not things to come but he explained those that had him foretold and he wrought not miracles upon bodies but he was miraculously powerfull upon soules Now should we come to compare Elias the Baptist ther we should finde them agree in many parallels as that they both came in very corrupt times that they both restored religion very much in that corruption that they were both persecuted exceedingly for that restoring Elias by Ahab and Jezabell and John by Herod and Herodias and divers other agreements upon which not to insist because they bee obvious to every eye this collection may we take up from the words in hand That Elias is a proper and pregnant patterne for Reformers As when Moses was making the Sanctuary and the appurtenances God often cals upon him to make all things according to the patterne which was shewed him in the mount So in this like worke of yours which you have in hand can you platforme out a reformation by a better patterne then by Elias since you will not doe it but by some patterne from the Mount A man that in the text is a copy to John the Baptist in his reforming And a man that in his owne time restored all things as our Saviour saith of him Mat. 17. 11. And fitly then may he be a patterne for these times of ours He restored perishing religion the decaying law he restored forgotten Prophecy and as the Jews hold forsaken Circumcision for of Circumcision doe they understand those words of Elias himselfe They have forsaken thy Covenant 1 King 19. 14. And of Elias the restorer of Circumcision they misunderstand those words of the Prophet The Angell or Messenger of the Covenant Mal. 3. 1. But I stand not here as a Surgeon over his Anatomy to reade unto you a Lecture of reforming upon the Sceleton of Elias it were beyond good manners as it is beyond my skill Let me addresse my selfe to you that sit by and are spectators of these Worthies as they labour in their worke in a word or two of application and that according to the two words that are before us the Spirit of Elias and his power 1. By the Spirit of Elias I told you is understood the Spirit of God that was upon him Now as the Apostle saith x Cor. 12. 4. the Spirit was but one but the gifts were diverse For looke in the fourth of the Acts and the thirty first it is said of the Apostles there that when they had prayed the place was shaken and they were filled with the Holy Ghost And so they had beene some dayes before namely on Pentecost day Act. 2. 4. Now they having beene filled then how can they be said to be filled againe Why then with the gift of tongues and now with the gift of holy boldnesse for for that it was they prayed ver. 29. Among the diverse gifts then of the holy Spirit that Elias had this is not the last nor the least that made him renowned His extraordinary zeale for the Lord of Hostes So much expresseth he concerning himselfe 1 King 19. 10. 14. And so much seemeth our Saviour to aime at in his answer to his two disciples that would have fire fetched from heaven as Elias had done Ye know not saith he what manner of spirit ye are of Luk. 9. 55. of a zeale beyond your warrant and you would be forward you know not how The thing that you may take notice of from hence is this That no true reformation can be expected which is not carried on with a spirit of zeale The workes of God must be wrought with his Spirit they that desire to forward his glory must do it with a holy forwardnesse It is the honour of Levi Deut. 33. 9. that when he was about the imployment of the Lord he was so zealous in it that he forgot all civill relations and said unto his father and to his mother I have not seene him neither did he acknowledge his brethren nor knew his owne children And so our Saviour in the third of Marke when his mother and kindred would have taken him off from preaching for they said he will faint or he is beside himselfe be it whether it will for the originall word will beare both he was so zealous in the worke in hand that he would not owne

either make John Baptist his going before Christ a patterne of Elias his doing the like whereas Elias in the Prophet and in the text is a patterne of John or else they make Elias who is to come no one can tell when the copy or paterne of the Baptist already come which is more then ridiculous Nor is it so much to be wondred that these men of corrupt judgements and minds should erre this same errour with the Jewes when we finde so many of the Fathers to have erred in the same opinion also and to Elias they have added Enoch and both these they say must come before the comming of Christ for these they hold to be the two witnesses in the 11. of the Revelation It is true indeed that some ones shall come in the spirit of Elias toward the end of the world according to that description in the Revelation but no expectation of Elias himselfe nor no description of Enoch at all The two witnesses in that place are plainely charactered and decyphered forth by the emblems of Moses Elias They have power to shut up Heaven that there be no raine vers. 6. Here is apregnant intimation of Elias They have power over the waters to turn them into bloud there is as pregnant a one of Moses These two men doe meete more then once mentioned together in the Scriptures They are named together in the conclusion of the Prophets Mal. 4. 4. Remember the Law of Moses my servant and in v. 5. Behold I send you Elias the Prophet They appeared together and attended our Saviour at his transfiguration Matth. 17. 3. They are thought on together in that description of the two witnesses as they also agreed together in this that the one was the giver of the Law at the first and the other the restorer of it when it was decaying the one was the great Prophet of the Jewes the other the great Prophet of the Gentiles as shall be touched anon When therefore the Jewes and the Gentiles shall be knit together into one Church upon the fulnesse of the one and the conversion of the other then shall God raise up a powerfull Ministery to them both united as in the spirit of Moses and Elias the time of their preaching is alluded to the time of our Saviours three yeares and a halfe and Antichrist shall rise up against them and persecute some of them to the death By the way as we goe it is not immateriall to be observed how things signifying and things signified doe often in Scripture beare one and the same name sometime the thing signifying is called by the same name of the thing signified As at the making of the first Covenant Exod. 24. 8. Moses sprinkled the bloud of the Covenant upon all the people Heb. 9. 19. That is upon the twelve Pillars which he had set up to represent the people vers. 4. as he had set up an Altar also to represent God For to besprinkle so many hundred thousands severally it was impossible in so short a time as he imployed in that worke And so in the second Covenant in the bloud of Christ the Bread and Wine that represent his body and bloud are called by the very names of his body and bloud Sometimes the thing signified is called by the name of the thing signifying as Hos. 3. 5. Afterward shall the children of Israel returne and seeke the Lord their God and David their King that is Christ their King which was signified by David And so in the matter that we have in hand the Prophet Malachi cals the Baptist Elias because he was so neerely represented and typified by Elias To them that hold that Elias shall personally come againe indeed we may justly propose these two or three queres First how shall a glorified bodie converse with bodies laden with corruption and mortality Observe at the transfiguration of our Saviour when the glorified bodies of Moses and Elias appeared to him the Disciples were so uncapable and unfit for conversing with them that some of them spake they knew not what Consider the disproportion that is betweene Angels and men if I may so call it in regard of converse the one spirits the other bodies how can these two be familiar together if an Angel take not on him a visible shape There is not so much distance indeed betwixt bodies glorified and bodies mortall yet is there so much as is sufficient to spoyle the converse of each with other Secondly What should Elias doe in his person here If to preach our Saviour hath told us that if men would not hearken to Moses and the Prophets they will not be perswaded though one rose from the dead And may we not inferre If men will not hearken to Moses the Prophets the Evangelists and the Apostles they will not beleeve though Elias came from heaven To Preach the Gospel If another then what was preached by Christ and his Apostles then is he accursed though he be Elias If the same why that treasure is carried in earthen vessels and not in vessells already glorified To destroy Antichrist This indeed is the common opinion but Paul hath told us that the Lord shall doe it with the Spirit of his mouth and the brightnesse of his comming Such questions as these might be proposed to that opinion that is indeed of much like nature with this but of farre more strangenesse namely that that would bring Christ from heaven againe to live personally on earth a thousand yeares First what should Christ that is in heaven blessed for ever doe a thousand yeares upon earth that is cursed The very first lesson that God taught Adam after he had taught him the lesson of Christ was this that he should not expect Christs kingdome upon earth for that he cursed Gen. 3. 17. Secondly how strange and improbable is it to conceive that Christ who in his humane frailty had a kingdome which was called and was the Kingdome of Heaven should now in his immortall glory come and possesse a kingdome on earth An opinion according to the censure of Eusebius raised upon the misconstruction of a place in the last booke of the New Testament as this about Elias was of a place in the last booke of the old For thus speaketh he concerning Papias the first father of this conceit The same Author also saith he sheweth that other things came to him by unwritten tradition which containe certaine strange Parables of our Saviour and new doctrines of his and some other things stuffed with legendary fables Among which he averreth that the kingdome of Christ after the resurrection of all flesh from the dead shall continue and endure upon this earth after a humane and bodily manner for a thousand yeares Which opinions I beleeve that he did entertaine because he misunderstood the Apostolicall interpretations which were delivered by them under hidden figures and obscure Parables For he