Selected quad for the lemma: blood_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
blood_n	bread_n	water_n	wine_n	8,430	5	7.9588	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29880	Religio medici	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.; Keck, Thomas. Annotations upon Religio medici.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665. Observations upon Religio medici.	1682 (1682)	Wing B5178; ESTC R12664	133,517	400

my belief of that untractible temper as not to bow at their obstacles or connive at matters wherein there are not manifest impieties The leaven therefore and ferment of all not only Civil but Religious actions is Wisdom without which to commit our selves to the flames is Homicide and I fear but to pass through one fire into another Sect. 27 That Miracles are ceased I can neither prove nor absolutely deny much less define the time and period of their cessation that they survived Christ is manifest upon the Record of Scripture that they out-lived the Apostles also and were revived at the Conversion of Nations many years after we cannot deny if we shall not question those Writers whose testimonies we do not controvert in points that make for our own opinions therefore that may have some truth in it that is reported by the Jesuites of their Miracles in the Indies I could wish it were true or had any other testimony than their own Pens They may easily believe those Miracles abroad who daily conceive a greater at home the transmutation of those visible elements into the body and blood of our Saviour for the conversion of Water into Wine which he wrought in Cana or what the Devil would have had him done in the Wilderness of Stones into Bread compared to this will scarce deserve the name of a Miracle Though indeed to speak properly there is not one Miracle greater than another they being the extraordinary effects of the Hand of God to which all things are of an equal facility and to create the World as easie as one single Creature For this is also a Miracle not onely to produce effects against or above Nature but before Nature and to create Nature as great a Miracle as to contradict or transcend her We do too narrowly define the Power of God restraining it to our capacities * I hold that God can do all things how he should work contradictions I do not understand yet dare not therefore deny ‖ I cannot see why the Angel of God should question Esdras to recal the time past if it were beyond his own power or that God should pose mortality in that which he was not able to perform himself I will not say God cannot but he will not perform many things which we plainly affirm he cannot this I am sure is the mannerliest proposition wherein notwithstanding I hold no Paradox For strictly his power is the same with his will and they both with all the rest do make but one God Sect. 28 Therefore that Miracles have been I do believe that they may yet be wrought by the living I do not deny but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead and this hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of reliques to examine the bones question the habits and appurtenances of Saints and even of Christ himself I cannot conceive why the Cross that Helena found and whereon Christ himself dyed should have power to restore others unto life * I excuse not Constantine from a fall off his Horse or a mischief from his enemies upon the wearing those nails on his bridle which our Saviour bore upon the Cross in his hands I compute among Piae fraudes nor many degrees before consecrated Swords and Roses that which Baldwyn King of Jerusalem return'd the Genovese for their cost and pains in his War to wit the ashes of John the Baptist Those that hold the sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty on their bodies speak naturally of Miracles and do not salve the doubt Now one reason I tender so little Devotion unto Reliques is I think the slender and doubtful respect I have always held unto Antiquities for that indeed which I admire is far before Antiquity that is Eternity and that is God himself who though he be styled the ancient of days cannot receive the adjunct of Antiquity who was before the World and shall be after it yet is not older than it for in his years there is no Climacter his duration is Eternity and far more venerable than Antiquity Sect. 29 * But above all things I wonder how the curiosity of wiser heads coulds pass that great and indisputable Miracle the cessation of Oracles and in what swoun their Reasons lay to content themselves and sit down with such a far-fetch'd and ridiculous reason as Plutarch alleadgeth for it The Jews that can believe the supernatural Solstice of the Sun in the days of Joshua have yet the impudence to deny the Eclipse which every Pagan confessed at his death but for this it is evident beyond all contradiction the Devil himself confessed it Certainly it is not a warrantable curiosity to examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of humane history or seek to confirm the Chronicle of Hester or Daniel by the authority of Magasthenes or Herodotus I confess I have had an unhappy curiosity this way * till I laughed my self out of it with a piece of Justine where he delivers that the Children of Israel for being scabbed were banished out of Egypt And truely since I have understood the occurrences of the World and know in what counterfeit shapes and deceitful vizards times present represent on the stage things past I do believe them little more then things to come Some have been of my opinion and endeavoured to write the History of their own lives wherein Moses hath out-gone them all and left not onely the story of his life but as some will have it of his death also Sect. 30 It is a riddle to me how this story of Oracles hath not worm'd out of the World that doubtful conceit of Spirits and Witches how so many learned heads should so far forget their Metaphysicks and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures as to question the existence of Spirits for my part * I have ever believed and do now know that there are Witches they that doubt of these do not onely deny them but spirits and are obliquely and upon consequence a sort not of Infidels but Atheists Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions shall questionless never behold any ‖ nor have the power to be so much as Witches the Devil hath them already in a heresie as capital as Witchcraft and to appear to them were but to convert them Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality there is not any that puzleth me more than the Legerdemain of Changelings I do not credit those transformations of reasonable creatures into beasts or that the Devil hath a power to transpeciate a man into a Horse who tempted Christ as a trial of his Divinity to convert but stones into bread I could believe that Spirits use with man the act of carnality and that in both sexes I conceive they may assume steal or contrive a body wherein there may be action enough to content decrepit lust or passion to satisfie more active veneries yet in both without