Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	bear_v	child_n	zion_n	16	3	9.0684	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30019	Discourses and essays on several subjects, relating chiefly to the controversies of these times, especially with the Socinians, deists, enthusiasts, and scepticks by Ja. Buerdsell ...; Selections. 1700	Buerdsell, James, 1669 or 70-1700.	1700 (1700)	Wing B5363; ESTC R7240	90,520	247

an innocent Person underwent a most barbarous poinant as well as shameful Death that One in whose Mouth was found no Guile was opprest was afflicted as well as despis'd and rejected of Men or else because he endur'd all this for our Sins But there is no Injustice in the former because it is plain from Scripture and Socinus himself owns That our Saviour after a Life of the most spotless Innocence had it taken away by the most cruel and ignominious Death a Death of Slaves and Malefactors And this not only by the Permission but even by the Ordinance and immediate Act of God for He was stricken smitten of God and afflicted and Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right Far be it from God that he should do Wickedness and that the Almighty should pervert Judgment So that the Enquiry will be this Whether it is consistent with Equity that the Holy JESVS the true and uniform Pattern of all Virtue should be thus severely punish'd as the Propitiator for us Sinners And that he should be so is neither irreconcilable with that positive Justice or Equity which God has reveal'd in his Word nor with that Natural Justice which may be drawn from the Reason of Mankind and the Practice and Usage of Nations and which Socinus so much insists on The derivation of Punishment from the Transgressor to the Innocent is not irreconcilable with the Divine Word For it is not irreconcilable with the Divine Word either that an Innocent should be punish'd for the Sins of the Guilty or that he should be in such manner punish'd that the Guilty may be freed from the Penalty due to Guilt First 'T is not irreconcilable with Scripture that the Innocent should be punish'd for the Sins of the Guilty For is not Canaan sentenc'd to be a Servant of Servants for the Unnaturalness of his Father Ham Are not seven Men of Saul's Sons hanged up to the Lord for his Treachery Are not seventy Thousand cut off for the Sin of David Which forc'd from him that Pathetical Exclamation worthy such a Prince Lo I have sinned and I have done wickedly but these Sheep what have they done Let thy hand I pray thee be against me and against my Father's house And in general tho' it is the Character of the Lord that He i● Merciful and Gracious Long-suffering and abundant in Goodness and Truth yet do not the very next words inform us that He visits the Iniquities of the Father 's upon the Children and upon the Childrens Children unto the third and fourth Generation And does not the Prophet in the Lamentation personating Sion complain Our Fathers have sinned and are not and we have born their Iniquities Farther It is not irreconcilable with Scripture Justice that the Guilty may be freed from the Penalty which the Innocent have undergone or which is the same are to undergo To prove this I shall only produce one Instance that of Ahab who for his short and transient Repentance and which past away like the morning dew had the Judgment denounc'd against him executed on his Posterity Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days in his Sons days will I bring the evil on his house As Punishment by deputation is thus reconcilable with the sentiments God's Word gives us of Justice so is it equally so with the Practice or Usage of Nations First it is agreeable to th●se That one Man should lay down his Life for another's Crimes and next That the Guilty should gain Impunity by something which has been suffer'd for him First it is consistent with the Usage of Nations that one Man should lay down his Life for another's Crimes In the Affair of Pledges in War receiv'd by all Countries are not these sacrific'd to the Fury of their Enemies for the Perfidiousness of their Fellow-Citizens Do they not die for Violations of Faith which sometimes they could not so much as contrive or design as being Children never eexcute as being Prisoners Did the most human and compassionate of Princes ever think it any reflection on his Justice to take the Forfeiture Or could Justice be preserv'd in the World without such Examples When one Prince is notoriously injur'd by another did the injur'd ever esteem it unjust or barbarous to revenge himself on his Enemy's innocent Subjects to bu●n ravage and destroy Cottages for the Affronts and Villanies of the Palace to kill or enslave the Peasant for the wicked Counsel of the Statesman When the Law of War i● broke between two Generals is not ho without regard to any antecedent Demerit always the most guilty who is first caught In the Decimation of mutinous Souldiers may not the fatal ●●o● fall on the peaceable and harmless as well as on the stubborn and rebellious● Or is there some secret Oracle in the Chances which infallibly guides them to the Offenders Or is it Injustice to punish the unfortunate Condemn'd how guiltless soever As it is thus consistent with the Use of Nations That one should suffer for another's Crimes so is it not less so That the Guilty should gain Impunity by something which has been suffer'd for him Thus in the instance of Sacrifices receiv'd into the Religion of all Nations whatsoever the matter of them was whether it was Thousand of Rams or whether they brought their first-born and offer'd the fruit of their Bodies for the sin of their Souls yet the intention of them both was to procure Impunity to the Sinner by laying the Punishment somewhere else And how useless soever the former might be or how cruel the latter yet both prove That it was the Sentiments of Mankind that freedom from Penalty might be purchas'd by a vicarious Infliction There was nothing therefore in our Saviour's Suffering which is inconsistent with the constant sence of Mankind in regard to the Expiation of Guilt Nor is there any thing in it unjust whether we examine it by the Rules of Justice display'd in the Word of God or by the Usage of Nations Nor farther is there any thing in it unreasonable which is now to be made out For it was reasonable that Christ should die for our Sins because first It is reasonable that God should release the Punishment due to our Sins and next That he should remit it by the method of punishing Christ in our stead That God should release our Punishment is reasonable whether we consider the Nature of God whose Goodness must strongly plead before the Throne of Grace for faln Man's Remission even before there was any other Advocate or whether we consider the Nature of that Service which God exacts from Man For God never obliges to Duty where he has put himself out of a possibility of requiting it But while Man's Sins were unforgiven while his obligation to Punishment remain'd it was not in the power of God to reward his Piety Since undistinguishing Misery was to be his

wrought this Propitiation Not any of these separately nor all of them united how far soever conducing to apply this Propitiation were the thing it self Christ did not propitiate for Sin by barely laying down his Life to confirm or bear witness to that Doctrin in which Remission of Sin was contain'd For this makes the Death of Christ rather a Consequent or an Effect of this Remission than the efficient Cause on Producer of it For the Existence or the Being of any thing is the Cause as well as the Measure of the Testimony and not the Testimony the Cause of the Existence Therefore if Christ's Death was only a Testimony to that in which Remission of Sins is included it has no share in it A Testimony in proportion to the Character and Worth of the Testator may give Light to those who are ignorant or Conviction to those who doubt of any Matter but can contribute nothing of reality to the thing it self But it is plain from Scripture that Christ's Death did really effectively and antecedently work to the Remission of Sins And that we have Redemption in his Blood the forgiveness of Sins That the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all Sin and that without shedding of Blood there is no Remission Therefore this shedding of Blood must be something more than a bare Testimony to the Doctrin in which Redemption Forgiveness Cleansing from Sin and Remission are imply'd must be the very Conveyer of these Blessings to us without which we had been still in our Sins and under an indispensible obligation to Punishment for them For at this rate the Blood of the Martyrs might purify us from Guilt as well as that of our Saviour seeing that that too was spilt as a Testimony to the same Doctrin Nay their Blood was on this account a more full and extensive Testimony to Christianity even than his because when our Saviour died tho' the Morals of the Christian religion were brought to their perfection yet there was something farther to be added as Objects of Faith and Belief which were not yet accomplish'd as our Saviour's Resurrection from the Dead and Ascension into Heaven Now to these our Saviour's Death could bear no Testimony as being results from it and transacted after it but the Death of the Martyrs still ratify'd and settl'd this fundamental Truth of Christ's being risen again which by being establish'd it self confirm'd all the rest Now Socinus himself freely owns that the Resurrection of our Saviour is a necessary Article of our Belief and an essential Principle of our Religion Nay this is almost the only one of the Socianian Creed which regards our Saviour And Socinus applies Remission of Sins to this rather than to our Saviour's Death because that the Hopes of that glorious State of which our Saviour took possession upon his Resurrection have the strongest Influences to reform our Lives which Reformation is immediately attended with the Remission of Sins So that the force of the Argument will be this That if all that our Saviour did towards Remission of Sin was only giving Testimony by his Death to that Doctrin in which Remission was preached then the Primitive Martyrs who bore witness to this Doctrin by laying down their Lives for it when it was advanc'd to a fuller extent did more abundantly at least equally co-operate to this Forgiveness But since this Remission is never attributed to any Testimony of theirs it follows That our Saviour made his Propitiation by some other act than this of Testifying Moreover as the reason why our Saviour was put to Death was not his preaching Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins but his declaring himself the Son of God so that which he attested by his Death was rather his own Divinity than the Truth of what he had before taught But granting that it might be one of the less principal Designs of our Saviour's Death to give Sanction to his Doctrin by his Blood yet this could not perform it so sutably and so completely as his Miracles did which were fully adapted to this purpose and to which he addresses as to the exact standard by which his Doctrin might be examin'd 'T is true that to die for a Man 's own Sentiments is a bold and a gallant appeal and a sufficient warrant that he himself believes what he says but this is not security enough for me to assent to his Tenents because he may be mistaken in the Truth of that which he himself is very conscientiously perswaded of For as Falshood may be maintain'd with equal warmth and zeal as Truth so may it be suffer'd for with resembling Patience But when Miracles are once brought to second a Doctrin these silence any farther doubts I yield I am convinc'd for these are either contrary to the Laws of Nature or above them and so are immediately acted by God himself who will neither exercise his own Power nor delegate it to any other to ratify a Lie or grace an Impostor So that since our Saviour's Miracles were more proper more clear and visible Tests of his Doctrin than his Death if his Propitiation or what he did towards the abolishing of Sin consisted only in bearing witness to his Doctrin it might rather be deriv'd from these than from his Blood which is a Paradox which hitherto has never been advanc'd To proceed This Propitiation cannot consist in Christ's meerly gaining or purchasing by his Death a Right or Title to forgive Sin For our Saviour did not purchase any such Right by his Death because he was invested with it long before he suffer'd and when a Person is once legally possest of any Right he needs no subsequent act to appropriate it more closely to him But that our Saviour had such a Right before his Crucifixion is plain as from several other places of Scripture so from that instance of his Healing the sick of the Palsy where he Prefaces his miraculous Cure with that comfortable Declaration of Son thy sins are forgiven thee And lest it might be urg'd That this was only a removing of his temporal Punishment it is very apparent that our Saviour distinguishes between these two Acts by subjoyning the other Command of Son take up thy bed and walk which had been utterly needless if the former words had implied a Cure of his Disease Nor can it be shewn That Propitiation for Sin can coincide with a Right of forgiving Sin for the former pre-supposes an offended Party which must be satisfy'd an offending one which is of it self unable to attone its Anger and lastly a Mediator or Sequester to finish the Reconcilement So that three Terms are necessary to make up an entire Propitiation but a Donation and a gratuitous Remission is nothing else is only between two where there are no insuperable Hindrances or Lets why the Donor should not suffer his Bounty to stream freely out towards the Indigent without any third Person to interpose for him or to bear his Punishment Farther