Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	seek_v	spirit_n	worshipper_n	2,020	5	12.2044	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A55226	A commentary on the prophecy of Malachi, by Edward Pocock D.D. Canon of Christ-Church, and Regius Professor of the Hebrew tongue, in the University of Oxford	Pococke, Edward, 1604-1691.	1677 (1677)	Wing P2661A; ESTC R216989	236,012	119

other or would choose any other place for his worship then Jerusalem he will certainly effect and therefore for the better assurance thereof repeats it for my Name shall be great that which by you a handfull of men is now despised shall be great among the Heathen by all acknowledged as such These words were when spoken spoken of what should after be but by Christs coming into the World were made good so appears it by what he saith in his discourse with the Samaritan Woman who thought of no other p●a●e where men ought ●o worship God but either the Mountain of the Samaritans mount Garizim or Jerusalem Joh. IV. 21 c. Woman beleive me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this Mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father And the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth The consideration of which words will give us the true import of these and compared together they illustrate one the other for his saying that God did no longer confine his worship i. e. the outward performance thereof by such rites and ceremonies as were ordained to Jerusalem or any other single place what is that but the verifying of what is here said that his Name should be great among the Nations from the rising of the Sun even to the going down of the same and what he ●a●th that the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth not only there but every where sheweth that as his Name should be great and magnified among them by their acknowledging him as Father so what is to be meant by that incense and pure offering which they should offer unto his Name viz. not such as are literally signified by those words and were then to be ordered according to the prescription of the Law but such worship as though expressed by the names of those carnal things under the Law then in continual use and known to all yet is indeed spiritual joining the Soul with the external performances agreeable to the nature of God who is a spirit of which those ordinances of worship under the Law were types and shadows And indeed the change of the place necessarily imports a change of the worship or things offered for expression of it for the incense and other offerings by the Law prescribed were not to be offered any where else but in the Temple at Jerusalem after that was there settled for the place of his worship Deut. XII 13 14 26. Those therefore that he will have in every place to be offered to him are manifestly of another nature though called by those names which then included generally all the external worship of God under the Old Testament while the Jews were Gods peculiar People they now figuratively understood denote the whole spiritual worship of God under the New Testament since the calling of the Gentiles and People of all Nations unto Gods Church the Kingdom of Christ. The incense therefore of the Gentiles converted to Christ and by the Gospell instructed in the true knowledge of God and taught to celebrate his great name and their pure offering are devout prayers Rev. V. 8 holy praises thanksgivings and alms-deeds and works of charity Heb. XIII 15 16. their whole selves Rom. XII 1 Divers of the ancient Christian Fathers look on the words as an express and undoubted Prophecy of the Christians solemn worship of God in the Eucharist or Sacrament of the Lords Supper called the Christian Sacrifice to which how they are appliable is shewed at large by the learned M r Mede in his discourse on these words where he gives to note that under the name of the Christian Sacrifice by the ancient Church was understood not the mere Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ but the whole sacred action or solemn Service of the Church assembled whereof this sacred mystery was a prime and principal part and therefore defines it to be An oblation of thanksgiving and praier to God the Father through Jesus Christ and his Sacrifice commemorated in the creatures of bread and wine wherewith God had been first agnized viz. by them sanctified by being offered and set before him as a present to acknowledge him the Lord and giver of all This whole Service duly performed is as at large he there shews deservedly stiled incense and a pure offering both in respect that it is purely or spiritually offered and in respect of the purity of the conscience and affection of the offerers throughly perswaded of the greatness of God and in respect of Christ whom it signifies and represents who is a Sacrifice without all spot and blemish and by this being offered to his Name in every place he saith the time should come when it should be great magnified and acknowledged as great among and by all Nations though the Jews did now profane it as he makes the connexion by rendring that though which our Translation renders but. But the sense will be much alike in reading but viz. to this purpose the time shall come when from the rising of the Sun c. my Name shall be great among the Gentiles who yet have not true knowledge of me but will when I shall see due time to reveal it to them readily embrace it Mean while it ought to have been so among you and duly magnified by you to whom I have from of old revealed it and given you ordinances and waies of worship by observing of which you should have magnified it but you on the contrary have by despising those ordinances and perverting those waies of worship profaned it When these words were spoken and thence forward as all along before since the giving of the Law till the time of this diffusing the knowledge of God and his Name and this alteration and reformation of his worship here spoken of the Jews had for their direction the Law of Moses and ought duly to have attended to it as they are warned Chap. IV. 4 but they did in all things go so contrary to it as that neither they nor any service they did were acceptable to God So notoriously so obstinately peccant were they both Priest and People that he sees it not sufficient to have once reproved them by reckoning up to them their faults but again repeats them that so they may be sensible how greatly they have offended him how displeasing it is to him that they should continue to do such things having been warned of them and that it is worse then what the Gentiles when he shall call them will do 12 ¶ But ye have profaned it in that ye say The table of the Lord is polluted and the fruit thereof even his meat is contemptible But ye have profaned it viz. my Name so verse 6. they are said to despise

Lord and they that turn shall be delivered from the day of Judgement as he saith c. Aben Ezra seems to be of the same opinion but to think that Eliah continued still in the same body and to believe that he appeared sometimes in the daies of their holy wisemen and praies God to hasten the time of his coming So others of them Abarbinel here thinks the same as to his person though not determining whether he shall come in a new raised body or in his old body which he never put off God saith he shews them that the first which shall arise at the Resurrection shall be Eliah the Prophet whether he shall rise as others do if his body were consumed when he was taken up as some of the modern Doctors affirm or whether he miraculously remain in his body and soul in the earthly Paradise as our wise men thought and that God will send him before the great and dreadfull day of the Lord come which is the day of judgement for all liveing All these thinke that here is a promise of sending Eliah the old Elijah in person Others of them of no less authority think it not necessarily to be so meant but of sending some other great Prophet who because he should be like to Eliah in dignity and knowledge is called by his name as appears by what R. Tanchum notes on this place whose words are in their own language partly set down in the Miscellaneous Notes in the book called Porta Mosis c. VI. p. 219. and translated into English sound thus This without doubt is a promise that there should appear a Prophet in Israel a little before the time of the appearance of the Messiah and some of the learned men do think that he is Elijah the Tishbite himself and that is the opinion that is found in most of the allegorical Expositions others think it meant that he should be some great Prophet like unto him in degree and occupying his place as for what concerns the knowledge of God and the making manifest of his name and therefore called by the name of Eliah So expresly declares that eminent great Doctor Rabbi Moses the son of Maimon at the end of his great juridical work called Mishneh Torah or the repetition of the Law and perhaps according to this opinion may he be understood to be Messias the son of Joseph as he saith also These words seem to intimate that that should be said by Maimonides in that place But I do not find any such thing in him there at all either in any printed Copies or Manuscripts which I have seen He mentions indeed in the preceeding Chapter there two Messiahs but the first he saith was David who delivered Israel from their enemies and the second should be of the posterity of David who should save Israel from the hands of the children of Esau the Romans he means according to that obstinate error of theirs expecting that Christ should come to restore a temporal Kingdome to them and destroy their enemies but of a Messiah the son of Joseph by whom what they mean hath been elsewhere shewn viz. such a one as should be of the posterity of Joseph and coming before the Messiah the Son of David undergo all the suffering part of such things as are in Scripture spoken of Messiah and leave only the glorious and triumphant part alone for the Son of David I find not in him any mention R. Tanchum goes on and saith That here is said the same that was above said c. III. 1 Behold I send my Messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and that what he there saith And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple even the Messenger of the Covenant c. is meant no doubt of the King Messiah may he quickly be revealed But the truth of the matter as to these promises will be distinctly known by their manifestation or fulfilling For there is none that hath any certain Tradition concerning them but every one speaks according to what appears to him and preponderates with him among the Interpretations of the Texts of Scripture as there also the same Moses the Son of Maimon declares Out of these words of his appears that among them is this difference that some understand Eliah in person to be here spoken of others not so but some great Prophet in degree and dignity like him The same difference and doubt seems anciently to have been among their Ancestors as appears by their questioning John Baptist whether he were the Messiah or Elias or that Prophet Joh. I. 19 20 21. for what can those words more probably seem to mean then whether he were Eliah in person or that Prophet which was prophesied of called by the name of Eliah And we may think that the Scribes mostly thought that it should be Eliah in person Matt. XVII 10 This difference and doubt he thinks cannot be determined but by the event and fulfilling of the things themselves no man saith Maimonides can know how they should be till they be fulfilled This therefore that we except against them for is why since they have been fulfilled the things concerning the Messenger and Eliah in John Baptist the things concerning the Lord spoken of in Christ they will not yet for all such demonstrations by the performance of their offices acknowledge them but rejecting them and shutting their eies against what hath been already fulfilled look on them as things not fulfilled and expect both Eliah and the Messiah as here promised yet to come But perhaps they will here be ready to retort and ask why then do Christians yet dissent among themselves concerning the Exposition of this Prophecy some of them affirming that here is meant Eliah in person and that he is yet to come as well as any Jews do It is to be confessed that here is a wider difference betwixt Christians then might be wished there were though on other grounds then the Jews go The Jews whether they understand it of Eliah in person or any other great Prophet set forth by his name all drive at this end to prove that the Messiah is not yet come because no such Prophet hath yet appeared against whom we need not add to what hath been said on c. III. v. 1. Their not acknowledging them is no proof that they are not both long since come The Christians all in this agreeing that the Messiah or Christ is already come a first time and shall at the end of the World come a second time and in this also that John Baptist was the promised Messenger sent before him at his first coming and that he was deservedly called Elias yet in this differ that some of them do not think that the Elias here mentioned is the same with the Messenger before promised c. III. 1 nor the same coming of Christ spoken of that there but that there is to be understood his first coming and