Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	body_n	earth_n	soul_n	16,341	5	5.1635	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86191	The key of Scripture-prophecies: or, A glass of some new discoveries. Being an answer to a book published by Mr John Elmestone. Wherein is resolved, 1. Whether a true constituted church, with true office and visible membership, together with the ordinances proper to such a Gospel-stating, continued true by a line of succession from the primitive time downward to our times: or whether it were not interrupted by the apostacie. 2. If they did there intermit, when they return again to their first glory, whether now, or hereafter; and what is the dispensation now approved by the Spirit. / By Simon Henden.	Henden, Simon.	1652 (1652)	Wing H1430; Thomason E668_11; ESTC R202520	120,810	124

which in Paul's time was the greatest cause of rents then was the primitive Church in her highest stature being as the sun in its full Meridian then were all things here spoken of fulfilled then and but till then was a growing rising time and after that was a gradual declining from that time Heresies and Errors the renters of union crouded in apace Euseb lib. 3. chap. 29. In little time after the three highest spheres of the Ministerial Office were wholly resolved and expired and that remaining of Pastors and Teachers grew in every succession more corrupt and so increased in pride and usurpation till at length the Angel totally apostated from heaven to earth lost the true key of Office and instead thereof had the key of the bottomless pit which brought a gloomy night on all Object 2. Your second Scripture is 1 Tim. 6.13 14 where say you is a strait charge laid upon Timothy to keep that course of discipline prescribed to him in that Epistle Answ This solemn command of the Apostle doth not comprehend the whole Epistle but onely that immediately going before which is to fight the good fight of faith in following after righteousness godliness love patience meekness and avoiding covetousness thereby to obtain eternal life and this is doctrinal and to be observed till the last coming of Christ Now that it is thus is clear from the text for the Spirit faith not Th●s but this as pointing at that immediately preceding nor commandments in the plural as respecting all the several precepts of the whole book but commandment in the singular number as respecting one The Apostle in this Epistle gives other charges by the particle these in the plural number as Chap. 4.11 These things charge and command and Chap. 5.21 having before given rules about discipline enjoyns him to do these things without partiality and lay on hands suddenly on no man The phrase of abiding is not at all annexed to these former charges they containing many things that failed but onely to this later singled out by it self which it well reviewed will further clear up our assertion and by a direct diameter contradict the sence which you would force it to To your fourth Objection from Matth. 28.19 20 we shall reply to in the conclusion of this Paragraph Section 2. Our second is that Ministery Prayer c. being perpetuated in the Word have always the life and power of the same Word in some measure accompanying them whereby to preserve their vital being Rev. 11.1.3 But the later wanting the same Word to uphold their abiding had the winde of the Spirit with-held from them whereby they became as a carcase without a soul Rev. 7.1 We are to observe that the outward matter of Ordinances are in themselves either barren empty elements or at most external formalities a meer carcase or void cask 't is the Name and power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit sent from him that is their internal and essential form when the same Spirit of life deserts them they then remain as a dead body is when the soul is severed from it or as an empty cabinet out of which the Jewel is taken Now the former of these answerable to the Prophecies are experimentally found to have some degree of their vital faculty subsisting There is the same light power and vertue in Ministery Prayer and Praisings that was in the primitive age though not in the same degree likewise for Baptism the badge of the Covenant there was some secret vertue in the Covenant to beget and preserve a sealed company amongst the Israelites which there was not amongst Turks and Heathens quat●nus sic also the Communion received upon the ground of our spiritual union with all the godly may confer some influence of comfort and refreshing flowing from the death of Christ For as there was a mystical relation of the scattered Saints which knit them to Christ the head and one to another by a spiritual bond so was there a mystical communion and feeding together with respect to the same inseparable union But for the later that are proper to a Church stated and invested with full power though in the first Gospel-day they held forth the glory and face of Jesus Christ yet afterwards when the external Government was taken from Christ's shoulders and placed upon Antichrist as it was generally in the hands of Popes Patriarchs and Archbishops thorowout the world according to what was prophesied that it should be given to the nations Rev. 11.2 then was the winde of the Spirit withheld from breathing in them then was the glory of God departed from them since which time they have been but as an empty shell out of which the kernel of their ancient truth was taken since then the lively efficacie and power of Christ is not found to accompany them wherever used Consider them as they are in the Romish Church who alone in all our Horizon can claim a succession from the primitive and where because your Office is derived from thence you are inevitably driven to hold their true being to remain What tender hearted Protestant who holds the Pope to be Antichrist can cordially embrace that his Holiness or his Clergie by laying on of hands can confer a true spiritual gift or that Christ accompanies their hand with so much glory as to make it the prime key on earth to beget the truth of Membership and Office Who would not blush to imagine that the Popes Excommunications or Bulls deliver over to Satan and by consequence that the Church of Rome ●nto which by these keys and doors they are entered and out of which they are shut is such a Church as may be named a kingdom of heaven or that what she bindes on earth is bound in heaven or that what she looses on earth is loosed in heaven or that she can forgive and retain sins All which powers she must have if the really possess the keys of the Kingdom For these can no more be severed from the keys while abiding true then the soul from the body while a living organ But if Rome be fundamentally a false Church as she is held to be by the Protestant party and stript naked of that primitive excellencie in her external government then what may be thought of you who deduce your interest from her by descent Experience hath taught the Saints that there was as little efficacy of the true Spirit if not as much of that Antichristian spirit of Cruelty Partiality Covetousness Enmity against the power of godliness in the Bishops Courts as was before in Rome And what the Presbytery hath been in Scotland where they had the full and uncontroulable command we leave to such to determine who have felt the rod. If it be true that Effectus sequitur virtutem causae The effect follows the vertue of its cause then surely no good fruit is like to spring from an Antichristian root The lifelesness formality contentions divisions c. that

are in and caused by our new-built models are too well known in England and how they ground upon an humane bottom is to be seen in the second Querie of the Cessation Object Against this you quaerie What means then hath been left for which the Lord would make due provision for his people from whence then came the conversion of the one hundred and fourty four thousand living under the Apostaci● and of multitudes in these later times were they aborigines a people springing out of the earth or let down from heaven Answ 1. You cannot I hope think that the conversion or edification of any soul under the Romish defection came from the Ordination Confirmation Admission Absolution c. of the Pope or any of his Hierarchy nor hath the least good but rather hurt come from these as exercised by the Bishops or you for they have been utterly empty of any true spiritual breathings as before is cleared 2. Gods ways of conversion are various his Spirit worketh when where and how it pleaseth sometimes he calleth from the womb Isai 49.1 Jer. 1.5 Luke 1.15 Rom. 9.11 sometimes by the godly conversation of the Saints by their holy walk and seasonable admonition Josh 2.1 Ruth 1.16 17. and 1 Pet. 3.1 Thus godly men in our times going into places where the Ministery hath been blinde and formal were instruments to work on and enlighten others and by this means many have been spiritualized in the Antichristian times Sometimes the Lord may sanctifie great outward afflictions and the sence of hainous sins as he did to Manasseh 2 Chron. 33.12 13. Sometimes by the sight of a strange and fearful accident striking a terror on the man as Waldus the first founder of the Waldenses was by seeing a man fall down dead before him also a kinsman of mine was first wrought upon by seeing a Fire-drake fall down beside him Sometimes by a divine light or vision as Paul Act. 9.3 also another precious Saint in our age by his own acknowledgement to me and others Sometimes by reading of the Scriptures 2 Tim. 3.15 which many very godly men in our days have affirmed to be the means God hath used to turn them to himself Sometimes by a powerful officiated Ministery as in the Primitive times Sometimes by a gifted Ministery as shall be in the next place manifested and this gifted Ministery together with the rest of the first sort of Ordinances as Prayer c. were the ordinary means to feed the woman in the wilderness The variety of Gods ways in this noble work of Conversion is beyond the apprehension of any creature and you much forget your self in tying it up onely to an Antichristian Office By what means the one hundred and fourty four thousand and the standers at the glassie sea were spiritually begotten and brought forth we leave it to the Lord sure we are they were not oborigines their birth came not from the earth nor from the earthly key of your Officials but from a grace descending from heaven Object 1. Against th●s gifted Ministery is affirmed That it is onely said not proved and may be as castly denied as affirmed Answ There was such a Ministery in the Primitive times as is evident Act. 8.4 Chap. 11.19 20.1 Cor. 14.31 and 1 Pet. 4.10 11 though then the chiefest glory thereof was administred by way of Office but in the Antichristian season the true Ministery was managed by a gift subordinate to and beneath that of a true Office for 1. There was no Office in all the West but what was Romish for many hundred yeers after the first fall and that it is there false and Antichristian shall be declared in the next Section 2. When all Office came from Antichrist and his false key then Christ himself to provide food for his Elect gave power to his two Witnesses not from the hand of a Popish Ordination but from his own immediate gift Rev. 11.3 I will give to my two Witnesses and they shall prophesie their prophecie came from the immediate gift of Christ This gift beginning at that time when the four open windes were held from their blast and the false key was given must be a gift inferiour to the former Office and come not from any mediate power on earth but simply from heaven 3. Experience hath taught us in our generation that there is not the least degree of vertue in Ordination that addes one scruple to the gift of the Ministery or tends to the furtherance of salvation but rather that the Spirit hath breathed forth with with greatest efficacie in such men who either had no Office at all witness Dudly Venner of Cranebrook M. George Frogmorton when he preached at Benn●nden with multitudes now in England the truth of whose Ministery is sealed by the conversion of thousands or else by such Non-conformists Ministers who in the closets of their brest renounced or at least disliked their Office and subscription and by these last when Office in your sence was not refined you may ghess how it was when more corrupt Object 2. They always acted as Officers and were so acknowledged Answ This is not true many neither were nor acted as Officers many disliked their Office some renounced it as is before declared and if any did so act and were acknowledged it was the blindness of the times so to account which the Lord in times of ignorance might connive at Certain we are that no good came from their Office that being false but onely from their gifts and the blessings thereof were weak and lowe in comparison of what they were in the primitive times they being darkned and bemudded by their Office And this is so far from being ungrateful as that it is agreeable to the prophecies and the event Object 3. Paul produceth the conversion of the Corinthians not so much to prove his gifts as for a seal of his Apostleship Answ We will first declare the occasion of this argument of Paul and then return to yours The occasion was this There were certain false Apostles who subtilly perswaded the Churches not that he was no Officer but that he was onely an ordinary Minister or one at least inferiour to an Apostle and so not to be looked on as infallible In consutation of whom Paul proves himself to be an Apostle in the strictest sense as is clear by this text compared with Chap. 10.16 Chap. 12.12 Gal. 1.1 17 18 19. Chap. 2.7 8.9 This premised we shall now reply to your chiefest Helena 1. When Office was true it had not onely an ordinary grace common with private Christians but also an addition of a grace and life proper to the Office Thus Apostles Prophets Evangelists Pastors and Teachers having several degrees of order were endowed with a propriety of gift peculiar to each degree and the success was answerable in the heaters Thus Paul being a true Apostle shewed forth all the signes thereof with Apostolical power and authority and the same proper

set up a false Christ in regiment This was not so palpable in outward shew but came in Christ his name under very specious pretences of Order Unity repressing heresies holiness advancing Christ and his Kingdom and therefore did the more universally deceive If the natures persons and offices our Lord Jesus had been directly originally and fundamentally razed in the Romish Church then Gods people could never have remained for so many ages in such a visible stand Object 3. The Popes extravagant exercise of discipline in excommunicating suspending not onely simple persons but whole Nations and disposing of all Ecclesiastical dignities was founded on this false doctrine that the Pope is universall Bishop Christs Vicar c. Answ 1 The same barely considered as a Notion or thing taught was not the ground-work of the beast but as usurped and layed in discipline a stone in the quarrie is not the foundation of a house till it be hewen out thence and disposed in the bottom of the building 2 This false Tenent of universality and visible headship is not a doctrinal if doctrine be minded as opposed to discipline but a disciplinall principle as any rational man may apprehend Object 4 None can comply with the Beast in the foundation of his estate without the loss of his salvation as who doth rely on another besides Christ and acknowledgeth him to be supream head under him vicar of Christ and submit to his new Articles of faith but many godly Christian have complyed with him in discipline as Ridly Latimer c. Answer 1 The beast it is true layed another foundation which primarily and radically was in discipline and secondarily struck against doctrine as is shewed before his visible headship and vicarship are principles of discipline and thence flow his articles of faith Besides he was fundamentally both in matter and forme a Beast for 1260 yeares and some time after and so long the Church is Babylon as before is cleared and all that time the world worshipped him but his Articles of faith are not of so long standing most whereof were framed in the Council of Trent And then that cannot be his groundwork which in order of nature and time followed his being the Cause must be before the Effect 2 This was damnable as to all so only to those Christians not truely grounded upon the Rock Jusus Christ Rev. 13.8 who having a meer outside shallow and sandie bottome might be radically supplanted by such a totall and delusive externality but the Elect having a deeper root then that of the Beast could not in the inward work of grace be by him subverted though they were outwardly clothed with his Livery Thus Gregory and other Popes of Rome before him might be in the Election yet their Office was essentially a Beast they living within the aforenamed time of the tribulation the like may be said of Ridly Hooper with the rest by you nominated If this beast had been originally false in the essentials of doctrine it had been damnable to them as well as to the rest of the world for if the foundations be utterly destroyed how can the righteous stand Psal 11.3 We desire the Reader rightly to observe the difference betwixt Mr. Elmestone and us in this particular subject He pleads that the Church of Rome is fundamentally false in doctrine which you may finde by his Arguments above and yet that in her order or Church-constitution she is in her ground-work true for he avers that the Pope hath the true key of Christs discipline in Ordination Excommunication c. and that Friars Monks Priests Bishops c. were radically right in their membership and orders which they had in and from that Church as you may read in the 29 and 30 pages of his book The former he is driven to maintaine or else he must contradict in writing what he and his party have published for many years in open Pulpits before the Nation that Rome is a false Church and that woman Babylon described in Revel 17. that the Pope is Antichrist and the beast delineated chap. 13. the latter he is inforced to manage or else he must yeild their office to be false which lineally descended from the Romish Church But how the body of discipline can retaine life in its binding and loosing where the soul of doctrine is departed or how she can be a bottomless pit and a stranger to Sion who is bottomly true in her order and hath the keyes of the Kingdome of heaven to let into and shut out of such a visible Kingdome we conceive cannot be proved by Scripture nor agree with any reason On the contrary we affirme that Church to be in visible Order false in her membership Babylonish in her office bestial but yet as the Prophecies foretold and the event hath manifested that there should be a godly people in that false visibility so for their sakes the Lord reserved the root of the Covenant of doctrine faith profession issuing thence in prayer praises c. as also a gifted ministery coming not from the bottomless key of that Church but from the immediate gift of Jesus Christ which you may see evinced in the Cessation the former must be fundamentally false or else Rome could not be Babylon the latter must be radically true or else there had been no subsistence for the Saints And thus we shall end with this third Paragraph Paragraph IV. OUrs in brief was this that the call of God in our times is only for separation without stating or without constituting and modelling visible Churches and sitting down therein Rev. 18.4 You may finde it declared in the Cessation that there are two bright and manifest dayes of Jesus Christ in the clear administration of his glory 1. That of the primitive apostolical day which continued till the key of the bottomless pit was given and thereby the Sun and aire darkned which shut up that brightness with darkness of a succeeding night 2. The day of his coming like lightning when the marriage of the Lamb doth againe return after the final subversion of Antichrist Betwixt these two periods is the time of the Babylonish age wherein neither of those two dayes are to be seen in such an open dispensation of his power the kingdome then being inward This latter season containes two distinct special and very observable revolutions 1. The time of the Saints tribulation lasting 1260 yeers in which term the true Church is only a sealed number disrobed of the beauty of her exterior order and visibly seated in the desart of nations where her choicest witnesses were outwardly invested with defiled and mournful garments and prophesied in that earth before the God of the earth where the beast had power to prevaile and tread them under foot making their estate mournful This begun about the yeer three hundred and ninty when the Bishop of Rome obtained the primacy of seat and is expired in the yeer 1650 as is shewed in the Cessation and