Selected quad for the lemma: woman_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
woman_n	bruise_v	enmity_n	serpent_n	1,728	5	9.9550	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50840	Mysteries in religion vindicated, or, The filiation, deity and satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and others with occasional reflections on several late pamphlets / by Luke Milbourne ...	Milbourne, Luke, 1649-1720.	1692 (1692)	Wing M2034; ESTC R34533	413,573	836

thine Altar Psal 26.6 therefore we find that during the whole force of the Ceremonial Law the outward Purifications might on an extraordinary Occasion as that of Hezekiah's Passover be dispensed with but the inward Purification of the Heart was a duty absolutely indispensible whence it was that when several of Ephraim and Manasseh and Issachar and Zabulun had not cleansed themselves Hezekiah put up that petition for them to God 2 Chron. 30.18 19 20. The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God the Lord God of his fathers though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the Sanctuary and the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah and healed the people which additional Passage intimates that God inflicted some punishment on the People for participating of the Passover when legally unprepared so to teach them a Lesson of punctual Obedience but he healed them upon account of their inward and spiritual Preparation to satisfie them that he esteemed inward Holiness beyond all the ceremonial Purifications of the Sanctuary In the Law there were a great many Washings appointed and upon several occasions the Scribes and Pharisees by virtue of some Traditions of their own added more Mark 7.3 4. they would not eat except they washed their hands and when they came from their markets they wash'd and there were many other things which they had received to hold as the washing of Cups and Pots and of brazen Vessels and of Tables Now all these things might contribute to outward Purity and argued a great care of Cleanliness nor were the Jews to have been condemned for these practices if they had not laid too great a weight upon them and for the sake of such Purifications banish'd all thoughts of true inward Purity out of their minds and this our Saviour reproves them for not condemning their outward Neatness but their making void the Law of God by their Traditions and he carries the reproof yet further Matth. 23.25 Wo unto you Scribes Pharisees Hypocrites for you make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but within they are full of extortion and excess c. But the Purity of the Soul was what God principally regarded and those outward Washings originally ordain'd in the Law were so many Types design'd to put Men in mind of that clean Hand and that pure Heart which every one was to endeavour after If we look into Circumcision it self that great initiating Ceremony in the Jewish Church it was really a preventive of natural Vncleanness yet though it were made by God the Seal of that Covenant between himself and the Seed of Abraham the Jews had a right notion of what that Ceremony was to put them in mind of given them by Moses himself Deut. 10.16 so he bids them to circumcise the fore-skin of their hearts and to be no more stiff-necked Stubbornness and Disobedience were the Vncleanness of the Heart therefore what care the Jews took to prevent that of Nature it was reasonable they should take to remove that accruing from Sin Moses therefore promises it as a great Blessing from Heaven on them in case of their sincere Repentance when under God's afflicting hand Deut. 30.6 the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul that thou mayst live where the stubborn Heart is once mollified the Love of God is easily settled in it Now that this Circumcision could effect nothing ex opere operato or that it could contribute nothing to the Obedience of the Soul we see demonstrated by the case of the Jews at present who are careful enough in performing the outward Rite of Circumcision and yet obdurate and unmalleable by all the Tendries of the Gospel therefore the Apostle has furnisht us with an easie Distinction between a Jew by Nature or one descended lineally from Abraham and a Jew by Grace or one ally'd to Abraham spiritually as he was the Father of the Faithful for says He He is not a Jew that is one outwardly Rom. 2.28 29. neither is that Circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew which is one inwardly and Circumcision is that of the Heart in the spirit whose praise is not of men but of God We see then that these Ceremonies to instance in no more have only a Typical Nature and can have no more because though they may serve to represent to our Memories the solid Duties of sincere Religion yet it 's impossible they should operate on the inward Man or in themselves make any one that is punctual in them acceptable in the sight of God Nor was there any need they should be more than Memorials or Representations of more important Good for those Ceremonial Vsages were from their first beginning whether among Adam's universal Race or the People of Israel intended only as comfortable supports to mens Spirits otherwise ready to droop under the various pressing calamities of a mortal Life God had given Adam the promise of the blessed Seed whose heel was to be bruised by the Serpent which bruise signified Death unless we can imagine Adam so weak as to draw any comfort from a literal Interpretation of the words but that sense could really afford none more than a promise that I should break the Head of some Snake and that should bite or wound my Heel could be a matter of consolation to all Mankind but Adam's case was this He saw how his Folly and Disobedience had made way to Sin and Death to tyrannize over all his own Posterity that the Sin committed was irrevocable the wages of Sin consequently inevitable these thoughts were enough to deject the most daring Spirits and Adam without the interposition of immense Goodness must have sunk irrecoverably beneath the dreadful weight of his own Misery What could prevent his despair could only be this an Assurance that the Powers of Sin and Death should not totally prevail but there should by some sufficient means be a stop effectually put to their Tyranny This Assurance God design'd to give him in that memorable Promise which though spoken to the Serpent was only a terrible Threatning to him but a precious Promise to Adam I will put enmity between thee and the Woman Gen. 3.15 and between thy seed and her seed it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel The bare settling an Enmity between Him who had tempted Adam by the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman could have signified little to Adam's satisfaction he had suffered too deeply in the first engagement with Him and therefore could not wish his Posterity engaged in a perpetual Warfare with so subtle an Adversary therefore the following words the seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent's head contain'd the Comfort long'd for To bruise the Head is to wound a vital part to crush it is to put an

end to all the strength and vigour of the Animal so crush'd nothing can be more fatal to a real Serpent than a Wound inflicted there it may live some time afterwards and when the Head is crush'd may threaten with the Tail but those Threatnings are languid and easily to be avoided If therefore the Seed of the Woman could crush the Serpent's Head he must get the Mastery and intire Conquest over all the Wiles and Stratagems over all the Strength and Violence of the Devil so as He must for the future lose his Interests and Power and be defeated in the expected events of his Malice and in short have his Tyranny wholly broken by the Seed of the Woman this was what alone could comfort Adam after his fatal Error But this Victory was not to be so easily gotten but that the Seed of the Woman must be partaker of the Inconveniences of the War the serpent must bruise his heel or wound his inferiour Part that which was at the greatest distance from his Vitals and from the Head that governing directing advising instructing Part so that the Government and Power of the Woman's Seed was not to be ended but he was to lose some Blood in that Conflict in which the Serpent's head was to be crush'd without Blood-shed then there could be no Victory obtain'd nor must the Seed of the Woman be absolutely invulnerable for had he been so there could have been no shedding of Blood and consequently no hope for remission to miserable Man Now those Sacrifices afterwards offer'd wherein the blood of living Creatures was shed were propitiatory or design'd to atone that God who was justly displeased with Sin and Sinners not as if the blood of Bulls or Goats or Lambs had any thing propitiatory in their own Nature but they were to represent continually to the Offerers minds that effectually propitiatory Blood which was to be shed in the great Combat between the Seed of the Woman and the Serpent wherein the former was to suffer in his less noble and inferiourly originated part and if those outward a scrifices effected so much they did as much as possibly they could and as much as was necessary for them to do for while Men had daily before their Eyes a representation of that bloody Contest wherein that great and malicious Enemy of Mankind was to be entirely conquer'd Men had reason always to live in hopes and to reap inviolable Comforts from those hopes But now after all if those Commemorative or Typical Sacrifices did bring to mind that Blood afterwards to be shed then when that Blood so represented was actually shed there was no need of any farther prophetical Representation and if the several Washings and Purifications under the Law related to that inward Cleanness and Purity which was afterwards by a more proper medium to be effected then when upon the Conquest gain'd by the Woman's Seed over that infernal Serpent that Sacred Blood was shed which was able to cleanse Mankind from all Sin the inward Purity of the Soul was effectually procured and ceremonial Purifications were rendred altogether useless and therefore that Law enjoining such Ceremonies might very well be disannull'd since Types or Shadows were never invented by any with any other design but to be vacated and abolished at such times as those things appear'd of which they were design'd at first to be the Shadows or Representations The Ceremonial Law though given to the Jews at first by God himself yet might very well be abrogated because in it self it was not essentially necessary to the being or well-being of a Church had it been so it had been unchangeable because it had been a part of the Law of Nature as the Moral Law was that receiv'd no additions or diminutions by the Ceremonial Law nor by the coming or the inherent Legislative Power of the Messias The truth of this reason that the Ceremonial Law is not necessary to the being or the well-being of a Church we find by the existence of the Christian Church among our selves at this day and by a due reflection upon the Church of God existent in the World before the time of Moses's receiving a Law from Mount Sinai We cannot deny but that the Roman part of the Christian World is as much nay infinitely more clogg'd with Ceremonies than that of the Jews ever was though we take in the traditional part of Jewish Ceremonies which had no foundation in what was delivered by Moses this our Church takes notice of in that preface concerning Ceremoníes prefixt to the Liturgy where giving the reason why many Ceremonies were taken away which had been used in times of Popery She tells us Preface of Ceremonies why some abol some kept It is partly because the great excess and multitude of them had so encreas'd in these latter days that the burden of them was intolerable whereof St. Augustine in his time complained that they were grown to such a multitude that the estate of Christian People was in worse case concerning that matter than were the Jews and therefore he advised the taking away that burden as there was opportunity but if he complain'd then much more would he have done so had he seen the number of those in use at the time of the Reformation to which the Multitude he had seen was nothing to be compared which multitude of Ceremonies was so great and many of them so dark that they did more confound and darken than declare and set forth Christ's Benefits to us This Persuasion was so rationally settled in the minds of our first Reformers that whatsoever the Enemies of it may pretend the established Church of England as distinct from that of Rome was settled with the fewest and the most decent Ceremonies of any National Church in the Christian World and upon that reason among others has been accounted the Glory of the Reformation by all but a few Ingrateful and Hypocritical Schismaticks whose viperine Rage has always been endeavouring to tear out the Bowels of their Mother Indeed under the Roman Cloud of numberless Ceremonies true Christianity has been almost lost and the Strength and Purity of that Holy Religion delivered to the World by our Saviour and his Apostles perverted into gaudy Show and ridiculous Pageantry Simplicity as far as it interferes not with Brutality and Slovenliness best becomes the Oeconomy of the Gospel and to be sure the Everlasting Truth will shine brightest there where there 's no Artifice made use of to disguise it nor more of Weight in matters of Salvation laid upon outward Circumstances than upon inward and solid Sincerity and Holiness This was the Ornament of God's Church before the Mosaic particular Dispensation for though it were impossible for Adam or any of the Antediluvian Patriarchs or for Abraham and his Posterity till the Redemption out of Aegyt to perform their Sacrifices without somewhat of Ceremony yet neither the same nor the same number were required of them as were