Selected quad for the lemma: virtue_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
virtue_n	brazen_a	look_v	serpent_n	839	5	9.9901	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61711	Sermons and discourses upon several occasions by G. Stradling ... ; together with an account of the author.	Stradling, George, 1621-1688.; Harrington, James, 1664-1693.	1692 (1692)	Wing S5783; ESTC R39104	236,831	593

Christ by the instigation of the Devil shed tears by the effusion of the Holy Ghost and as they had cruelly wounded him to the death they were penitently and mercifully by his Word and Spirit themselves wounded with Repentance unto life Which piercing as it was in part accomplished in those few Converts fore-mentioned so shall it have its fuller and more perfect fulfilling on the whole Nation of the Jews when they shall see their error and be all turned unto Christ as St. Paul tells us Rom. 11. 11 32. I heartily wish it may as no doubt it was intended be fulfilled in us too and that my Sermon may have the same effect on you that it had on Peter's Auditors That looking on Him whom we also have pierced we may with them be pierced at the heart too We find that at our Lord's crucifixion all Nature mourned all the Creation groaned Rom. 8. 22. The Sun put on blacks the Earth trembled the Rocks cleft asunder and it were strange if we of all God's creatures should remain insensible and express no sorrow when we behold the Lord of Nature suffering and for us too What a shame were it for us that the dumb inanimate Creatures should upbraid us as the Children their fellows in the Market-place Matth. 11. 17. We have mourned to you and ye have not wept Let us then bear our part in this Quire of Mourners but with this difference that our Mourning be not so much outward as inward not so much in the face as in the heart a heart pricked with sorrow for having pierced Christ and not so much for the smart as out of the sense of our Sin not so much for our selves as for him for his sake whom we have crucified for no Tears prevail with God but such as are wept over Jesus Christ If he be not the flame in our Breasts that melts our Hearts if he be not the Object that draws forth our Tears though we should weep Bloud our Bloud shall be but as Water spilt upon the ground If we grieve and not in and for Christ our grief will be but Hypocrisie at least but Formality This is the Sorrow this the Mourning which our piercing of Christ calls for as a proper effect of the Spirit of Grace and Supplication and it must come in at the Eye For the way to be pierced with Christ is to look upon him Iisdem quibus videmus oculis flemus The Eye is the instrument both of Sight and Sorrow That must affect the Heart What the Eye never sees the Heart as we say never rues If the Understanding be not convinced of Sin our Hearts will never be moved at it Sight of Sin must precede Sorrow for it The Prodigal first came to himself ere he returned to his Father Look we then to Christ but let us reflect upon our selves too that our Eyes may dissolve into Tears without which Christ's Bloud shall not wash away our guilt of having spilled it Let us sorrow but with a sorrow according to God such as may work in us repentance unto Salvation for having crucified the Author of it and then we may look upon Him to our comfort 3. With an Eye of Faith which is another prospect here mainly intended For the looking on in the Text is an Allusion to the beholding of the brazen Serpent a Type of Christ crucified on the Cross as himself tells us Joh. 3. 16. It was not the brazen Serpent it self but their looking upon it that cured the bitten Israelites It was their Faith that did it which came in at their Eye though it usually does at the Ear and gave it a healing quality As it was not the Woman's touch but her Faith that drew out Vertue from Christ to stanch her issue of bloud It is the generally received opinion that the Souldier who pierced Christ one Longinus was when he did that act blind but by vertue of that pretious Bloud which sprang on his Eyes from our Saviour's side he had his Sight restored and was hereupon converted and after became a Bishop of Cappadocia and in the end died a Martyr What truth there is in the History I know not but very much surely there is in the Application If by Faith we will look upon him whom we have pierced that Sight shall not only clear our Eyes to discern but touch our Hearts and dispose them to embrace a Saviour No spiritual Cure to be wrought on us without our Faith We find that Christ in all his miraculous Cures of diseased Persons still required their Faith as a necessary preparative to their healing as if Omnipotency it self could doe nothing without the Patient's belief nor will the diseases of our Souls be ever remedied without the concurrence of ours too The Prophet Elijah by applying the Members of his Body to those of the dead Child fetcht it again to life Let us stretch every part of Christ pierced to our Souls and they will soon be revived be they never so dead in trespasses and sins 4. We are to look upon Christ pierced with an Eye of Love This we know naturally comes in at the Eye too Oculi sunt in amore duces Now as there is no such Attractive of Love as Love so never was there any such Love as that of Christ in dying for us It was our Sin that gave Him his Wounds but it was his Love that made him receive them And we may reade that Love to use the Prophet Esay's expression in the Palms of his hands that were stretcht out for us upon his Cross In the Prints of the nails which could never have enter'd Him had not his Love made them a passage And in the point of the Spear which lets our Eyes into the very Bowels of his tender Love and Compassion towards us Well may each of us say with the Holy Martyr Ignatius My Love was crucified for me If the Jews that stood by Him when he was about to raise Lazarus said truly Behold how he loved him when he shed but a few Tears out of his Eyes much more truly may we say of Him Behold how he loved us for whom He shed his very Heart-bloud the utmost Expression of Love as Himself tells us Joh. 15. 13. Greater Love than this hath no Man to bestow his life for his friends and yet greater love than this did he shew forth by laying down his life for us who were his Enemies I say by laying it down for no man had power to take it from him Joh. 10. 18. It was his own pure Love not any force that compell'd him to dye for us And therefore our Obligation to love him ought to be so much the stronger by how much his suffering for us was more free and voluntary 5. Lastly Let us look on Him whom we have pierced with infinite Joy and Exultation not for that we have pierced Him which ought to produce a quite contrary Passion in us

modest man will scorn to name Surely such persons as these are not like to be a sweeter sacrifice to God than they are to themselves being scarce a proper Holocaust for the Devil Behold then what a severe Master our Lord is who forbids his Followers shame and filth will not suffer us to be the loathing of all the world and of our selves enjoyning us such a purity of body as will not only save our Souls but our Reputations too requiring of us a pure conscience a clear body and a fair fame and giving us such Laws as will secure unto us both health and honour and which is more render us acceptable to God as well as to all good men These Laws if we observe we shall then be fit Sacrifices for God and acceptable ones too especially if they have these Conditions in them 1. Purity I will wash my hands in Innocency O Lord and so will I goe to thine Altar Psal. 26. 6. 2. Humility implied in the very nature of the Sacrifice under the Law which was to be destroyed by the Fire or the Knife Humility does as it were waste and consume to nothing makes us as an Holocaust a whole Burnt-offering nothing in our selves nothing in respect of God and this exaninition exalts all God's graces in us He needs none of our Presents we enrich him not with them our goods and our persons are nothing unto him but we benefit our selves by a just apprehension of our own emptiness and unworthiness 3. Sincerity which sets a high value on our meannest gifts The Heathen Poet could put the question In Templo quid facit Aurum and he calls for Compositum jus fasque animi a true sincere heart and mind and with these says he farre litabo If we bring our Sheep to God's Altar and them alone we had as good leave them behind us as an unprofitable Carriage Wherewithall shall I come before the Lord with Burnt-offerings and Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with Thousands of Rams or Ten Thousand Rivers of Oil No learn another Oblation He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God God looks into the inward Frame of the Heart and values not the offerer by the gift but the gift by the offerer 4. Lastly wilt thou offer up an odour of a sweet smell well-pleasing unto thy God Let thy Saviour's Merits perfume thy Sacrifices For if they be not sprinkled with the Bloud of this Lamb of God they will smell as rank as a Carkass There remains one thing more in the Text and that is that the Apostle here calls the Christian Sacrifice a Reasonable Service which seems to imply that lagal ones were in the Letter and as the Jews understood and practised them a Service scarce Reasonable Not that in its time it was altogether unreasonable For it had been commanded by God whose Will is Man's highest Reason as a service very fit for a carnal People who being as it were Children under the Pupillage of the Law were most taken with an External gaudy Pomp of Religion Besides that Sacrifices were Seals of the Jew's Covenant with God A solemn profession of gratitude for Mercies received and very proper Instruments to keep them from that Idolatry to which they were so naturally prone but only I say comparatively in opposition to the Christian way of worship which is so far above it For the Jewish service consisted in such things as had no suitableness to the Nature of God For what are Bloud and Smoak to the God of Spirits and were but shadows of better things but such shadows as did darken them and were mistaken for those very things of which they were but Types and so did hinder that very good they were intended to promote They did so quite defeat the End for which they were commanded that God often professeth with Truth and anger too that he did not command them at all As in Esay 1. 13. Incense is an Abomination unto me If ever it dare to approach Heaven it shall only serve as a Cloud to darken it New Moons Sabbaths and the Calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is Iniquity even the solemn Meeting The Sabbath was grown to be that Day of whose Rest God was most weary It was a question which was most abominable to see their Altars swim with Bloud or their hands to be so full of it Their Devotions might vye Iniquity with their sins nor did they least provoke God when they thought they did most appease him And 't is observable that the greatest Sacrificers under the Law were mostly the greatest Sinners being so taken up with the Ceremony that they wholly neglected the Substance And therefore at best these things being but Relativi Juris and not for themselves when they came alone or with no better a retinue than those Sins aud Irregularities they did countenance no wonder if God removed them as he did the High Places if he cut them down as he did the Groves and stamp them to Powder like the abused Brazen Serpent especially when he saw that the Jews rested in them and made them the only considerable thing in their Worship as if God were to value a Man not by the greatness of his Soul but the largeness of his Ox that his only Excellencies were his Cattle and his Vertues those alone which grazed in his Pasture It was high time then for God to put an end to these Typical Services which were every where so grosly mistaken as if because they were expensive to Man they were to be accounted beneficial to God They thought as Himself complains Ps. 50. v. 13. That He did eat the flesh of Bulls and drink the bloud of Goats a ridiculous fancy Heathens had too as appears by Lucian who makes himself merry with it and 't is not improbable but that the grosser Jews had the like and accordingly they were made use of not only as an Attonement but as a Bribe to pacifie the Almighty by such a vile Trick Heaven in their Conceipt was to be reconciled by the Vices of the Earth by gifts to be corrupted that so by pardoning Men's sins he might share in them too Had not the Antecedent been abominable the Consequent had not been amiss If God would be luxurious with their Luxuries He was not to revenge them not to punish the sin He shar'd in nor to be angry with that guilt He did partake of and if He would be content to receive one part of the Rapine surely He could not in reason punish the other This in short may serve to shew how little reason there was in the legal Sacrifices in themselves barely considered And therefore we find that for a long time they were not commanded but freely offered by men out of their Zeal which alone recommended them unto God and