Thing neither to be done within this Compass of time nor perhaps so proper for this Exercise and therefore let it suffice us upon the warrant of express Scripture not Sophisticated by Nice and forced Expositions but plainly interpreted by the General Tradition of the Church to which all private Reason ought in Reason to give place to confess and adore the Deity of the Holy Ghost Now this Holy Spirit is in the Church as the Soul in the Natural Body For as the same Soul does in and by the several parts of the Body exercise several functions and Operations so the Holy Ghost while He animates the mystical Body of Christ Causes in it several Gifts and Powers by which He Enables it to exert Variety of Actions And as in the River Nilus it is the same fountain which supplies the seven streams So when we read of the seven Spirits Revelation 4.5 They are but so many several Gifts of the same Spirit all bearing the Name and Title of their Donor as it is usual for so many several Volumes to bear the single denomination of their Author and we say properly enough that such an one has read Cicero or Plutarch when he has read their Works But now surely this Glorious Person or Being who thus enlightens the minds of all Men coming into the World in some measure and of the Church more Especially cannot be in the Rank and Number of Created Beings The Heathens attributed a kind of Divinity or Godhead to springs because of that Continual Inexhaustible Emanation from them Resembling a kind of Infinity But here we see the very Gifts of the Spirit to be Divine and where we find such a Divinity in the stream certainly we may well ascribe it in a more transcendent manner to the Fountain Besides if the Holy Ghost were not God I cannot see how our Bodies could be well called his Temples since none but God can Challenge to Himself the Prerogative of a Temple And so much for the first Consequent But Secondly This great diversity of the Spirits Gifts may read a Lecture of Humility to some and of Contentment to others God indeed in this great Scheme of the Creation has drawn some Capital Letters set forth some Master-Pieces and furnished them with Higher Abilities than ordinary and given them Gifts as it were with both hands But for all that none can brag of a Monopoly of them none has so absolutely engrossed them all as to be that Thing of which we may say Here we see what and how much God can do No God has wrote upon no Created Being the utmost stint of his Power but only the free Issues and Products of his Pleasure God has made no Man in Opprobrium Naturae only to overlook his Fellow Creatures to upbraid them with their Defects and to discourage them with the Amazing distance of the Comparison He has filled no Man's Intellectuals so full but He has left some Vacuities in them that may sometimes send Him for supplies to Minds of a much Lower Pitch He has Stocked no Land or Countrey with Such Universal Plenty without the mixture of some wants to be the ground and Cause of Commerce for mutual wants and mutual perfections together are the Bond and Cement of Conversation The vast Knowledge and Ruling Abilities of Moses might yet stand in need of Aaron's Elocution And He who speaks with the Tongue of Angels and the greatest Fluency of Spiritual Rhetorick may yet be at a loss when He comes to matters of Controversy and to assert the Truth against the Assaults and Sophistry of a subtle opponent God indeed can and sometimes happily does unite both these Gifts in the same Person But where He does not let not Him who can Preach condemn Him who can only Dispute neither let Him who can dispute despise Him who can only Preach For as we have shewn before the Church is served by both and has equally need of some Men to speak and declare the Word and of others to Defend it it being enough and too often more than enough for one Man to maintain what another says In which Work the speaking part is indeed the more Easy but the Defensive the more glorious And as this may give some Check to the Presumption of the most raised Understandings so it should prevent the despondency of the meanest For the Apostle makes this very use of it in the 21. and 22. v. Where He would not have even the lowest and poorest member of the Church to be dejected upon the Consideration of what it wants but rather be Comforted in the sense of what it has Let not the foot Trample upon it self because it does not rule the Body but consider that it has the honour to support it Nay the greatest Abilities are sometimes beholding to the very meanest if but for this only that without them they would want the Gloss and Lustre of a Foyl The Two Talents went into Heaven as easily as the Five And God has put a Peculiar usefulness even into the smallest Members of the Body answerable to some Need or Defect in the greatest thereby to level them to a mutual Intercourse of Compliance and Benefaction which alone can keep things equal and is indeed the very Poise and bâ—last of Society And thus much for the second Consequent But Thirdly The foregoing Doctrine affords us also a Touchstone for the Tryal of Spirits For such as are the Gifts such must be also the Spirit from which they flow And since both of them have been so much pretended to it is well for the Church that it has rule of judgment and a note of Discrimination There is none who is not willfully a stranger to the Affairs of our Israel but has had the Noise and blusters of Gifted Brethren and of persons pretending to the Spirit ringing in his Ears Concerning which Plea of theirs since we all know that there are Spirits both Good and Bad it cannot be denyed but that in some sence they might have the Spirit such a Spirit as it was and that in a very large measure But as for their Gifts we must Examine them by the standard of those here mentioned by the Apostle And first for that of Prophecy These Men were once full of a Prophecy that the World should be destroyed in the Year 1656 Because forsooth the Flood came upon the Old World in that Year Reckoning from the Creation And again that the Downfal of Pope and Antichrist together with that of Monarchy and Episcopacy which they always accounted as Limbs of Antichrist should be in the Year 1666. And that because some Remarkable mention is made of the Number 666 in the Revelation with many other such like Predictions The Event of all which has shewn that those Men were not of God's Privy Council but on the Contrary that all their Prophecies were like those of Almanacks which warn every Wise Body to prepare against foul weather by their foretelling
Death where is thy Sting So that when we come to resign back these frail Bodies these Vessels of Mortality to the Dust from whence they were taken we may yet say of our Souls as Christ did of the Damosel whom he raised up That she was not dead but only Slept for in like manner we shall as certainly rise out of the Grave and Triumph over the dishonours of its Rottenness and Putrefaction as we rise in the Morning out of our Beds with Bodies refreshed and advanced into Higher and Nobler Perfections For the Head being once risen we may be sure the Members cannot stay long behind And Christ is already risen and gone before to prepare Mansions for all those who belong to him under that High Relation That where He is They to their Eternal Comfort may be also rejoycing and singing Praises and Hallelujahs to him who sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for Ever and Ever To Whom Be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Glory Might Majesty and Dominion to Eternal Ages Amen THE Christian Pentecost OR THE Solemn Effusion of the Holy Ghost IN THE Several Miraculous Gifts Conferred by Him upon the Apostles and first Christians Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey 1692. 1 COR. XII 4 Now there are diversities of Gifts but the same Spirit OUR Blessed Saviour having Newly Changed his Crown of Thorns for a Crown of Glory and ascending up on high took Possession of his Royal Estate and Soveraignty according to the Custom of Princes is here treating with this Lower World now at so great a distance from him by his Ambassador And for the greater Splendour of the Embassy and Authority of the Message by an Ambassador no ways Inferiour to Himself even the Holy Ghost the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity in Glory Equal in Majesty Co-eternal and therefore most peculiarly fit not only as a Deputy but as a kind of Alter Idem to supply his Place and Presence here upon Earth and indeed had he not been Equal to him in the Godhead he could no more have supplyed his Place than he could have filled it which we know in the Accounts of the World are Things extreamly different as by sad and scandalous Experience is too often found Now the summ of this his Glorious Negotiation was to Confirm and ratifie Christ's Doctrine to seal the New Charter of the Worlds Blessedness given by Christ Himself and drawn up by his Apostles and Certainly it was not a greater Work first to Publish than it was afterwards to Confirm it For Christianity being a Religion made up of Truth and Miracle could not Receive its Growth from any Power less than that which first gave it its Birth And being withal a Doctrine Contrary to Corrupt Nature and to those Things which Men most Eagerly Loved to wit their Worldly Interests and their Carnal Lusts it must needs have quickly decayed and withered and dyed away if not Watered by the same Hand of Omnipotence by which it was first planted Nothing could keep it up but such a standing mighty Power as should be able upon all occasions to Countermand and Controul Nature such an one as should at the same time both Instruct and Astonish and baffle the Disputes of Reason by the Obvious overpowering Convictions of Sense And this was the Design of the Spirit 's Mission That the same Holy Ghost who had given Christ his Conception might now give Christianity its Confirmation And this he did by that wonderful and various Effusion of his Miraculous Gifts upon the first Messengers and Propagators of this Divine Religion For as our Saviour himself said John 4.48 Vnless you see signs and wonders you will not believe So that Sight was to introduce Belief and accordingly the first Conquest and Conviction was made upon the Eye and from thence passed victorious to the Heart This therefore was their Rhetorick this their method of Perswasion Their Words were Works Divinity and Physick went together They Cured the Body and thereby Convinced the Soul They Conveyed and enforced all their Exhortations not by the Arts of Eloquence but by the Gift of Tongues These were the Speakers and Miracle the Interpreter Now in Treating of these Words I shall Consider these Three Things First What those Gifts were which were conferred by the Spirit both upon the Apostles and first Professors of Christianity Secondly What is Imported and to be understood by their Diversity and Thirdly And Lastly What are the Consequences of their Emanation from one and the same Spirit First And first for the first of them These Gifts are called in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Acts of Grace or favour and signifie here certain Qualities and Perfections which the Spirit of God freely bestowed upon Men for the better Enabling them to Preach the Gospel and to settle the Christian Religion in the World and accordingly we will Consider them under that known Dichotomy or Division by which they stand divided into Ordinary and Extraordinary And first for the Ordinary Gifts of the Spirit these he conveys to us by the mediation of our own Endeavours And as He who both makes the Watch and Winds up the Wheels of it may not Improperly be said to be the Author of its motion so God who first Created and since sustains the Powers and Faculties of the Soul may justly be called the Cause of all those Perfections and Improvements which the said faculties shall attain unto by their Respective Operations For that which gives the form gives also the Consequents of that form and the Principle with all its appendant Actions is to be referred to the same Donor But God forbid that I should determine God's Title to our Actions barely in his giving us the Power and Faculty of Acting Durandus indeed an Eminent Schoolman held so and so must Pelagius and his followers hold too if they will be True to and abide by their own Principles But undoubtedly God does not only give the Power but also vouchsafes an Active Influence and Concurrence to the production of every particular Action so far as it has either a Natural or a Moral goodness in it And therefore in all acquired Gifts or Habits such as are those of Philosophy Oratory or Divinity we are properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Co-workers with God And God ordinarily gives them to none but to such as Labour hard for them They are so his Gifts that they are also our own Acquisitions His assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate Cause of these Perfections And to imagine the Contrary is all one as if a Man should think to be a Scholar barely by his Master's Teaching without his own Learning In all these Cases God is ready to do his Part but not to do both His own and ours too Secondly The other sort of the Spirit 's Gifts are Extraordinary Which are so absolutely and entirely from God that the Soul
st v. we have him Singing of Iudgment as well as Mercy and so raising the sweetest Harmony out of the seeming discord of the most disagreeing Attributes There can be no Composition in any thing without some multiplicity and diversity of Parts and therefore we have a Catalogue of those Gifts which did as it were compound and make up the Primitive Church in the 8 9 and 10 th verses of this 12 th Chapter of the 1 st to the Corinthians Where the Apostle tells us That to one is given the Word of Wisdom to another the Word of Knowledge to another Faith with many more such like Gifts there reckoned up and indeed so many and various were the Gifts poured out by the Spirit of God upon the first Preachers of the Gospel that there is need almost of the Gift of Tongues to rehearse them Of which great Variety as we have hitherto observed the Vse so it is intended also for the Ornament of the Church I say Ornament for I cannot perswade my self that God ever designed his Church for a Rude Naked Unbeautified Lump or lay to the Foundations of Purity in the Ruines of decency The Entrance and Gate of Solomon's Temple was called Beautiful and as there were several Orders of Priests and Levites belonging to it so they had their several Offices their several Chambers and Apartments in that Temple It was a kind of Representation of Heaven in which our Saviour tells us there are many Mansions But behold there are Wiser much Wiser than Solomon amongst us who will have it quite otherwise in the Christian Church Nothing of Order or Distinction nothing of Splendour or Dress must be allowed of here No they are all for lying in the Dust before God as their word is and therefore will have nothing but Dust and Nastiness for the Churches Furniture To attempt a Confutation of such Persons would be superfluous and indeed I have no more to say for those who contend for such a sordid and mean Condition of the Church but that in this they do not so much speak their Devotion as their Education it being generally found that a slovenly way of breeding disposes Men to a kind of slovenly Religion Much might be spoken by way of Analogy between the Internal and External the Spiritual and the Material Ornaments of the Church But both of them serve to dress and set off the Spouse of Christ the first to recommend Her to his own Eyes and the latter to the Eyes of the World Where would be the Beauty of the Heavens themselves if it were not for the multitude of the Stars and the Variety of their Influences and then for the Earth here below and those who dwell therein certainly we might live without the Plumes of Peacocks and the Curious Colours of Flowers without so many different Odors so many several Tastes and such an Infinite diversity of Airs and Sounds But where would then be the glory and lustre of the Universe the flourish and gaiety of Nature if our Senses were forced to be always poring upon the same Things without the Diversion of Change and the quickning Relish of Variety And now when matters stand thus may we not justly say If God so cloathes the Fields so paints the Flowers and paves the very places we Tread upon and with such curiosity provides for all our senses which yet are but the Servants and under Officers of the Soul shall He not much more provide for the Soul it self and his own service thereby in the Glorious Oeconomy and great Concernments of the Church and moreover does not such a Liberal Effusion of Gifts equally Argue both the Power and the Bounty of the Giver Number and multitude are the signs of Riches and the materials of Plenty And therefore though Vnity in the Government and Communion of the Church is indeed a great blessing yet in the Gifts and endowments of it it would be but Penury and a Curse But Secondly As this diversity of the Spirits Gifts imports Variety so it excludes Contrariety Different they are but they are not opposite There is no Jarr no Combat or Contest between them but all are disposed of with mutual Agreements and a happy subordination For as Variety adorns so Opposition destroys Things most different in Nature may yet be united in the same design and the most distant Lines may meet an◠Clasp in the same Centre As for Instance One would Think that the Spirit of Meekness and the Spirit of Zeal stood at that distance of Contrariety as to defie all Possibility either of likeness or Reconcilement and yet as we have already shewn they both may and do equally serve and carry on the great End and business of Religion And the same Spirit which Baptizes with Water Baptizes also with Fire It is an Art to attain the same End by several Methods and to make things of a quite contrary Operation to concur in one and the same Effect Come we now to the third and last Thing proposed from the Words which is to shew What are the Consequences of this Emanation of so many and different Gifts from one and the same Spirit I shall instance in Four directly and naturally deducible from it As First If the Spirit Works such Variety of Gifts and those in so vast a Multitude and for the most part above the force of Nature certainly it is but Rational to Conclude That it is a Being superiour to Nature and so may justly Challenge to it self a Deity There have been several who have impugned the Deity of the Holy Ghost though not in the same manner but the Principal of them come within these two sorts 1. Macedonius and his followers who allowed Him to be a Person but denyed his Deity Affirming Him to be the Chief Angel the supreme and most Excellent of those Blessed Spirits imployed by God in Administring the Affairs of the Church and Conveying good suggestions to the minds of Men and for that cause to be called the Holy Spirit and sometimes simply and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or by way of Eminence The Spirit And the same was held also by one Biddle an Heretick of some Note here in England a little before the Restauration That is to say while Confusion and Toleration gave Countenance to almost all Religions except the True 2. But secondly Socinus and his School deny both the Deity of the Holy Ghost and his Personal subsistence too not granting Him to be a Person but only the Power of God To wit That Vis or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which he effects or produces Things And amongst those who assert this none have given such bold strokes at the Deity of the Holy Ghost as Crellius in his Book de uno Deo Patre and his other de Spiritu Sancto Now to draw forth and Insist upon all the Arguments and Texts of Scripture which use to be traversed on both sides in this Controversy would be a
one expect a Welcome if not coming to his Own And coming also not to Charge but to Enrich them not to share what they had but to Recover what they had Lost and in a word to change their Temporals into Eternals and bring an overflowing performance and fruition to those who had lived hitherto only upon promise and expectation But it fell out much otherwise His Own received Him not Nor indeed if we look further into the World shall we find this Usage so very strange or wonderful For Kindred is not Friendship but only an Opportunity of nearer converse which is the true Cause of and natural inducement to it It is not to have the same bloud in ones Veins to have lain in the same Womb or to bend the knee to the same Father but to have the same Inclinations the same Affections and the same Soul that makes the Friend Otherwise Iacob may supplant Esau and Esau hate and design the Death of Iacob And we constantly see the Grand-Seignior's Coronation-Purple dipt in the Bloud of his Murthered Brethren Sacrificed to Reason of State or at least to his own unreasonable fears and suspicions But Friends strive not who shall kill but who shall die first If then the Love of kindred is so small surely the Love of Countrey-Men and Neighbours can promise but little more A Prophet may without the help of his Prophetick Spirit foresee that he shall have but little honour in His own Country Men naturally malign the Greatness or Vertue of a Fellow-Citizen or a Domestick they think the nearness of it upbraids and obscures them It is a trouble to have the Sun still shining in their Faces And therefore the Jews in this followed but the Common practice of Men whose emulation usually preys upon the next Superior in the same family company or profession The bitterest and the loudest scolding is for the most part amongst those of the same street In short there is a kind of ill disposition in most Men much resembling that of Dogs they bark at what is high and remote from them and bite what is next Now in this second part of the Text in which is represented the Entertainment which Christ found in the World expressed to us by those Words His own received Him not we shall consider these three things 1. The Grounds upon which the Jews rejected Christ. 2. The Unreasonableness of those Grounds And 3. The great Arguments that they had to the Contrary As to the First of these to reckon up all the Pretences that the Jews alledge for their not acknowledging of Christ would be as endless as the Tales and Fooleries of their Rabbies A sort of Men noted for nothing more than two very ill Qualities to wit that they are still given to invent and write Lyes and those such unlikely and incredible Lyes that none can believe them but such as write them But the Exceptions which seem to carry most of Reason and Argument with them are these Two First That Christ came not as a Temporal Prince Secondly That they look'd upon him as an Underminer and a Destroyer of the Law of Moses 1. As for the First It was a Perswasion which had sunk into their very Veins and Marrow a Perswasion which they built upon as the Grand Fundamental Article of all their Creed That their Messiah should be a Temporal Prince nor can any thing beat their Posterity out of it to this day They fansied nothing but Triumphs and Trophees and all the Nations of the Earth licking the Dust before them under the Victorious Conduct of their Messiah They expected such an One as should disenslave them from the Roman Yoke make the Senate stoop to their Sanhedrim and the Capitol do homage to their Temple Nay and we find the Disciples themselves leaven'd with the same Conceit their minds still ran upon the Grandeurs of an Earthly Soveraignty upon Sitting at Christ's right and left hand in His Kingdom banqueting and making merry at His Table and who should have the greatest Office and Place under him So Carnal were the Thoughts even of those who owned Christ for the Messiah but how much more of the rest of the Jews who contemn'd and hated him to the same degree So that while they were feeding themselves with such fancies and expectations how can we suppose that they would receive a Person bearing himself for the Messiah and yet in the poor habit and profession of a mean mechanick as also preaching to them nothing but Humility Self-denial and a Contempt of those Glories and Temporal felicities the enjoyment of which they had made the very design of their Religion Surely the frustration of their hopes and the huge contrariety of these things to their beloved preconceived Notions could not but enrage them to the greatest disdain and rejection of his Person and Doctrine imaginable And acordingly it did so For they scorned persecuted and even spat upon him long before his Crucifixion and no doubt between Rage and Derision a Thousand Flouts were thrown at him As what shall we receive a thread-bare Messiah a fellow fitter to wield a Saw or an Hatchet than a Scepter For is not this the Carpenter's Son And have we not seen him in his shop and his Cottage amongst his pittiful Kindred And can such an One be a fit Person to step into the Throne of David To redeem Israel and to Cope with all the Roman Power No it is absurd unreasonable and impossible and to be in bondage to the Romans is nobler than to be freed by the hand of such a Deliverer 2. Their other Grand exception against him was that he set himself against the Law of Moses Their Reverence to which was so Sacred that they judged it the unchangeable Rule of all Humane Actions and that their Messiah at his coming was to impose the observation of it upon all Nations and so to establish it for ever Nay and they had an equal Reverence for all the parts of it as well the Judicial and Ceremonial as the Moral and being naturally of a gross and a thick conception of things perhaps a much greater For still we shall find them more zealous in tything Mint and Rue and Cummin and washing pots and platters where chiefly their mind was than in the Prime Duties of Mercy and Justice And as for their beloved Sabbath they placed the Celebration of it more in doing nothing than in doing Good and rather in sitting still than a rescuing a Life or saving a Soul So that when Christ came to interpret and reduce the Moral Law to its inward Vigor and Spirituality they whose Soul was of so gross a make that it was scarce a Spirit presently defied him as a Samaritan and an Impostor and would by no means hear of such strange impracticable Notions But when from refining and correcting their Expositions and sence of the Moral Law he proceeded also to foretel and declare the approaching destruction of their
Temple and therewith a Period to be put to all their Rites and Ceremonies they grew impatient and could hold no longer but sought to Kill him and thereby Thought that they did God good service and Moses too So wonderfully it seems were these Men concern'd for God's honour that they had no way to shew it but by rejecting his Son out of deference to his Servant We have seen here the two great exceptions which so block'd up the Minds and Hearts of the Jewish Nation against Jesus Christ their True Messiah that when He came to His Own His Own rejected and threw Him off I come now in the next place 2. To shew the weakness and unreasonableness of these Exceptions And First For Christ's being a Temporal Monarch who should subdue and bring all Nations under the Jewish Scepter I answer That it was so far from necessary that it was absolutely impossbile that the Messiah should be such an one and that upon the Account of a double supposition neither of which I conceive will be denyed by the Jews themselves 1. The First is the professed Design of His Coming which was to be a Blesing to all Nations for it is over and over declared in Scripture that in the seed of Abraham that is in the Messiah all Nations of the Earth should be blessed But now if they mean this of a Temporal blessing as I am sure they intend no other then I demand how this can agree with his being such a Prince as according to their description must conquer all People and enslave them to the Jews as Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water as their Vassals and Tributaries and in a word liable upon all occasions to be insulted over by the worst condition'd People in the World A worthy blessing indeed and such an one as I believe few Nations would desire to be beholden to the seed of Abraham for For there is no Nation or People that can need the coming of a Messiah to bless them in this manner since they may bless themselves so whensoever they please if they will but send Messengers to some of their Neighbours wiser and powerfuller than themselves and declare their Estates and Country at their service provided they will but come and make them slaves without calling them so by sending Armies to take Possession of their Forts and Garrisons to seize their Lands Moneys and whatsoever else they have and in a word to oppress beggar and squeeze them as dry as a Pumice and then trample upon them because they can get no more out of them Let any people I say as they shall like this apply to some Potent Overgrown Prince whom the fools his Neighbours shall have made so and I dare undertake that upon a word speaking they shall find him ready to be such a Messias to them at any Time And yet this was all that the Gentile World could gain by those Magnificent Promises of the Messiah as Universal a Blessing as the Prophets had foretold he should be if the Jews Opinion concerning the Nature of his Kingdom over the rest of the World should take place But since they judge such a kind of Government so great a Blessing to Mankind it is pitty but they should have a large and lasting Enjoyment of it themselves and be made to feel what it is to be peeled and polled fleeced and flayed taxed and trod upon by the several Governments they should happen to fall under and so find the same usage from other Princes which they had so liberally designed for them under their supposed Messiah As indeed through the just Judgment of God they have in a great measure found ever since the Crucifixion of Christ. Second The other supposition upon which I disprove the Messiah's being such a Temporal Prince is the unquestionable Truth of all the Prophecies recorded of Him in Scripture many of which declare only his Sufferings his Humility his Low Despised Estate and so are utterly incompatible with such a Princely Condition Those two the first Psal. 22. the other in Isai. 53. are sufficient proofs of this 'T is not to be denied indeed that several have attempted to make them have no respect at all to the Messiah but still the Truth has been superiour to all such attempts The Jewish Rabbies for the most part understand them of the whole Body of the People of Israel And one we know amongst our Christian Interpreters though it will be hard to Christen his Interpretation who will needs have this whole 53 d. Chap. of Isai. to relate only to the Prophet Ieremy in the first and Historical Sense of it Little certainly to the service of Christianity unless we can think the properest way for confirming our Faith especially against its mortal Adversaries the Jews be to strip it of the chief supports which the Old Testament affords it But every little fetch of Wit and Criticism must not think to bear down the whole stream of Christian Catholick Interpreters and much less the apparent force and evidence of so clear a Prophecy And therefore to return to the Rabbies themselves the most Learned of them after all such fruitless attempts understand those Prophecies only of the Messiah But then being fond of his Temporal Reign and Greatness some of them have invented the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of two several Messiahs Messiah Ben David and Messiah Ben Ioseph One whereof was to be Potent and Victorious the other Low Afflicted and at length Kill'd A bold unheard-of Fiction and never known to the Ancient Jewish Church till the Modern Rabbies began to Doat and Blaspheme at all Adventures But there is no shift so Senceless and Groundless which an obstinate adherence to a desperate Cause will not drive the Defenders of it to It is clear therefore that all the Pretence which the Jews have of the Temporal Reign and Greatness of their Messiah is sufficiently answered and cut off by these two Considerations For to argue with them further from the Spirituality of the Messiah's Kingdom as that the end of it was to abstract from all Carnal Earthly Sensual Enjoyments as the certain hinderers of Piety and underminers of the Spirit would be but a begging of the Question as to the Jews who would contend as positively that this was not to be the intent of it And besides the truth is their Principles and Temper are so hugely estranged from such Considerations that a Man might as well read a Lecture of Musick or Astronomy to an Ox or an Ass as go about to perswade them that their Messiah was only to plant his Kingdom in Men's Hearts and by infusing into them the Graces of Humility Temperance and Heavenly Mindedness to conquer their Corruptions and reign over their Carnal Affections which they had a great deal rather should reign over them And thus much for answer to their first Exception Secondly I come now to shew the Unreasonableness of the other grounded upon a Pretence