Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	ancient_a	church_n	doctrine_n	1,896	5	6.2759	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29689	A golden key to open hidden treasures, or, Several great points that refer to the saints present blessedness and their future happiness, with the resolution of several important questions here you have also the active and passive obedience of Christ vindicated and improved ... : you have farther eleven serious singular pleas, that all sincere Christians may safely and groundedly make to those ten Scriptures in the Old and New Testament, that speak of the general judgment, and of that particular judgment, that must certainly pass upon them all immediately after death ... / by Tho. Brooks ...	Brooks, Thomas, 1608-1680.; Brooks, Thomas, 1608-1680. Golden key to open hidden treasures. Part 2.	1675 (1675)	Wing B4942; ESTC R20167	340,648	428

O Lord of hosts how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem the Angel here is that Jesus who is our Advocate 1 John 2. 1 2. with the father he speaks as one intimately affected with the state and condition of poor Jerusalem Christ plays the Advocate for his suffering people and feelingly pleads for them he being afflicted in all their afflictions it moved him to observe that God's enemies were in a better case than his people and this put him upon that passionate expostulation O Lord of hosts how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem Alexander the great applied his Crown to the souldiers forehead that had received a wound for him and Constantine the great kissed the hollow of Paphnutius eye that he had lost for Christ what an honour was it to the souldier and to Paphnutius that these great men should have fellow-feeling of their sufferings and sympathize with them in their sorrows but oh then what an honour is it to such poor worms as we are that Jesus Christ who is Godman who is the Prince of the Kings of the earth that he should have a fellow-feeling Rev. 1. 5. of all our miseries and sympathize with us in all our troubles But Tenthly Is Jesus Christ God-man is he very God and very man then from hence you may see the excellency of Christ above man above all other men yea above Adam in innocency Christ as man was perfect in all graces Isa 11. 1 2. And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledg and of the fear of the Lord. God gave the spirit of wisdom to him not by measure and Joh. 3. 34. Luk. 2. 46 47. therefore at twelve years of age you find him in the Sanedrim disputing with the Doctors and asking them questions 1 John 16. and of his fulness have all we received grace for grace Col. 1. 19. for it pleased the father that in him should all fulness dwell cap. 2. 3. In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg The state of innocency was an excellent estate it was an estate of Gen. 1. 27. Eph. 4. 22 23 24. perfect holiness and righteousness by his holiness he was carried out to know the Lord to love the Lord to delight in the Lord to fear the Lord and to take him as his chiefest good A legal holiness consists in an exact perfect and compleat conformity in heart and life to the whole reveiled will of God and this was the holiness that Adam had in his innocency and this holiness was immediately derived from God and was perfect Adam's holiness was as co-natural to him as unholiness is now to us Adam's holiness was as natural and as pleasing and as delightful to him as any way of unholiness can be natural pleasing and delightful to us The estate of innocency was an estate of perfect wisdom knowledg and understanding witness the names that Adam gave to Gen. 2. 20. all the creatures suitable and apposite to their natures The estate of innocency was an estate of great honour and dignity David brings in Adam in his innocent estate with a Crown upon his head and that Crown was a Crown of glory and honour thou hast crowned him with glory and Psal 8. 5. honour his place was little lower than the Angels but far above all other creatures The estate of innocency it was an estate of great Dominion and Authority man being made the Soveraign Lord of the whole Creation Psal 8. 6 7 8. we need not stand to enlarge upon one parcel of his demesns namely that which they call Paradise sith the Gen. 1. 26. whole both of Sea and Land and all the creatures in both were his Possession his Paradise certainly man's first estate was a state of perfect and compleat happiness there being nothing within him but what was desirable nothing without him but what was amiable and nothing about him but what was serviceable and comfortable and yet Jesus Christ who is God-man is infinitely more glorious and excellent than ever Adam was for Adam was set in a mutable condition but Christ is the Rock of Ages he is stedfast and abiding for ever he is yesterday Heb. 13. 8. and to day and the same for ever he is the same afore time in time and after time he is the same that is unchangeable in his Essence Promises and Doctrine Christ is the same in respect of vertue and the faith of believers even his Manhood before it was in being was cloathed with perfection of grace and so continueth for ever And again Adam was a mere man and alone by himself but in Christ the humane nature was hypostatically united unto the divine and hence it comes to pass that Christ even as man had a greater measure of knowledg and revelation of Grace and heavenly gifts than ever Adam had The Apostle tells us that in Christ dwells all the fulness of the Godhead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bodily that is essentially that is not by a naked and bare communicating of vertue as God is said to dwell in his Saints but by a substantial union of the two natures divine and humane the eternal word and the man consisting of soul and body whereby they become one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one person one subsistence Now from this admirable and wonderful union of the two natures in Christ there flows to the Manhood of Christ a plenitude and fulness of all spiritual Wisdom and Grace such as was never found in any mere man no not in Adam whilest he stood in his integrity and uprightness But Eleventhly Is Jesus Christ God man is he very God and very man then this truth looks very sowrly and frowningly upon all such as deny the Godhead of Christ as Arrians Turks Jews how many be there in this City in this Nation who stiffly deny the Divinity of Christ and dispute against it and write against it and blaspheme that great truth without which I think a man may safely say there is no possibility of salvation In ancient times near unto the Age of the Apostles this Doctrine of Christ's Godhead and Eternal Generation from the father was greatly opposed by sundry wicked and blasphemous Hereticks as Ebion Cerinthus Arrius c who stirred up great troubles and bloody Persecutions against the Church for maintaining this great truth of Christ's Godhead they asserted that Christ had no true slesh 't was only the likeness of flesh which he appeared in and that his body was only a phantastick imaginary body but had the body of Christ been only such a body then his conception nativity death resurrection are all too but imaginary things and then his sufferings and crucifiction are but mere fancies too

and if so then what would become of us what would become of our salvation then our faith would be in vain and our hope would be in vain and our hearing preaching praying and receiving would all be in vain yea then all our Religion would vanish into a m●re fancy also when a man's conscience is awakened to see his sin and misery and he shall find guilt to lay like a load upon his soul and when he shall see that divine justice is to be satisfied and divine wrath to be pacified and the curse to be born and the Law to be fulfilled and his nature to be renewed his heart to be changed and his sins to be pardoned or ●ls● his soul can never be saved how can such a person venture his soul his all upon one that is but a m●re crcature certainly a mere man is no Rock no City of refuge and no sure foundation for a man to build his faith and hope upon woe to that man that ever he was born that has no Jesus but a Socinian's Jesus to rest upon oh 't is sad trusting to one who is man but not God flesh but not spirit as you love the eternal safety of your precious souls and would be happy for ever as you would escape Hell and get to Heaven lean on none rest on none but that Jesus who is God-man who is very God and very man Apollinaris held that Christ took not the whole nature of man but a humane body only without a soul and that the Godhead was instead of a soul to the Manhood Also Eutyches who confounded the two natures of Christ and their properties c. Also Apelles and the Manichees who denied the true humane body and held him to have an aerial or imaginary body Though the popular sort deified Alexander the great yet having Plutarch in vita got a clap with an Arrow he said ye stile me Jupiter's son as if immortal sed hoc vulnus clamat esse hominem this blood that issues from the wound proves me in the issue a man this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the blood of man not of God and smelling the stench of his own flesh he asked his flatterers if the God's yielded such a scent so may it be said of Jesus Christ our Saviour though Myriads of Angels and Saints acclaim he is a God ergo immortal and a crew of Hereticks disclaim him to be man as the Marcionites averred that he had a phantastical body and Apelles who conceived that he had a sydereal substance yet the streams of blood following the arrow of death that struck him makes it good that he was perfect man of a reasonable soul and humane flesh subsisting And as this truth looks sowerly upon the above mentioned persons so it looks sowerly upon the Papists who by their Doctrine of the real presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament do overthrow one of the properties of his humane nature which is to be but in one place present at once This truth also looks sowerly upon the Lutherans or Ubiquitaries who teach that Christ's humane nature is in all places by vertue of the personal union c. I wonder that of all the old Errours swept down into this latter Age as into a sink of time this of the Socinians and Arrians should be held forth among the rest O sirs beware of their Doctrines shun their meetings and persons that come to you with the denial of the Divinity of Christ in their mouths this was John's Doctrine and Practise Irenaeus saith that after he was returned from his banishment and came to Ephesus he came to bathe himself and in the bath he found Cerinthus that said Christ had no being till he received it from the Virgin Mary upon the sight of whom John skipped out of the Bath and called his companions from thence saying let us go from this place lest the Bath should fall down upon us because Cerinthus is in it that is so great an enemy to God ye see his Doctrine see his words too 2 John 10 11. If any come to you having not this doctrine receive him not into your house neither bid him God speed For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds What that Doctrine was if you cast your eye upon the Scripture you shall find it to be the Doctrine of the Divinity of Christ shew no love where you owe nothing but hatred I hate every Psal 119. 113. false way saith David And I shall look upon Auxentius as upon a Devil so long as he is an Arrian said Hilarius We must shew no countenance nor give no encouragement to such as deny either ●ne divinity or humanity of Christ I have been the longer upon the Divinity and humanity of Christ 1. Because the times we live in require it 2. That poor weak staggering Christians may be strengthned established and setled in the truth as it is in Jesus 3. That I may give in my testimony and witness against all those who are poysoned and corrupted with Socinian and Arrian Principles which destroy the souls of men 4. That those in whose hands this book may fall may be the better furnished to make head against men of corrupt minds who by slight of hand and cunning craftiness lie in wait to deceive Eph. 4. 14. Sixthly As he that did feel and suffer the very torments of Hell though not after a hellish manner was God-man so the punishments that Christ did sustain for us must be referred only to the substance and not unto the circumstances of punishment The punishment which Christ endured if it be considered in its substance kind or nature so 't was the same with what the sinner himself should have undergone Now the punishment due to the sinner was death the curse of the Law c. now this Christ underwent for he was made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. but if you consider the punishment which Christ endur'd with respect to certain circumstances adjuncts and accidents as the eternity of it desperation going along with it c. then I say it was not the same but equivalent Whether the work of man's redemption could have been wrought without the sufferings and humiliation of Christ is not determinable by men but that it was the most admirable way which wisdom justice and mercy could require cannot be denied And the reason is because though the enduring of the punishments as to the substance of them could and did agree with him as a surety yet the circumstances of those punishments could not have befallen him unless he had been a sinner and therefore every inordination in suffering was far from Christ and a perpetual duration of suffering could not befall him for the first of these had been contrary to the holiness and dignity of his person and the other had made void the end of his suretiship and Mediatorship which was so to suffer as yet to conquer and