Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n
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A75693
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An argument proving, that according to the covenant of eternal life revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence into that eternal life, without passing through death altho the humane nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through death.
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Asgill, John, 1659-1738.
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1700
(1700)
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Wing A3926; ESTC R208477
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45,123
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107
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of every Man within any Country doth subject him to the Laws of that Country is the Law of all Nations And without these Concessions there could be no Laws because else every Man must have a particular Law delivered him for himself which being a publick Inconvenience cannot be admitted in the nature of Laws And thus this Law of Death fell upon Christ himself as a Descendant from the same common Ancestors Christ had two descents in his Birth One was his natural descent from the Virgin Mary his real Mother The other his legal descent from Joseph his supposed Father But in his Genealogy set down by two Evangelists this legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon without taking any notice of his descent by his Mother's side Because this descent by Joseph was his legitimate descent according to that Law which makes all the Issue of the Woman born during the Coverture to be the Issue of the Husband although it be notoriously known that in Fact it were begotten by another And this is our Law at this day altho the Issue be born but one day after the Espousals And the Canon Law is much stronger for that makes the Issue born of the Woman before Marriage let them be begotten by whom she will unless by a former Husband in Wedlock to be the Issue of the Husband to whom she is afterward married And therefore Christ having such a Father-in-Law as this his descent must be accounted from his Father-in-Law and not from his Mother because all legal descents are accounted from the Father and not from the Mother When the eleven Tribes were polled in the Wilderness of Sinai they gave account of their Pedigrees after their Families by the House of their Fathers without taking any notice of their descent by their Mothers side And so did they of the Tribe of Levi who were numbered after them Wherefore I say the business of the Evangelists being to shew such a descent in Christ by which the Curse of the Law might fall upon him in his Birth they must shew a descent upon which the Law might operate For as this is a Law all Proceedings thereupon are according to Law And hence it is observable that his being born of a Virgin espoused and not of a single Virgin was not accidental but designed For as it was necessary that he should be born of a pure Virgin to preserve his Nature from the defilements of the Humanity so it was necessary that he should be born of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the Curse of the Law by a legal Father For which purpose it was necessary that the Birth of Christ should in the terms of the Evangelist be on this wise and no otherwise And as this peculiar Genealogy of Christ was not accidental but designed the quality of his descent was so too There are mutual courtesies and civilities used amongst Equals but he that accepteth Riches or Honour from another doth thereby acknowledg him to be his Superior for the lesser is blessed of the greater Wherefore when Abraham had rescued the Plunder taken from the Sodomites he permitted the young Men that fought with him to eat and drink of the Provisions and his three Confederates that assisted him to take their Portion of the Goods but for his own part taking himself to be as good a Man as the then King of Sodom he scorned to accept from him the value of a Shoe Latchet lest it should be said he made Abraham rich So tho Christ in the days of his flesh behaved himself with all the freedom of Conversation The Son of Man came eating and drinking and when little Zacheus climb'd up a Tree to see him he frankly invited himself to dine with him Yet knowing himself to be the Son of God he neither could nor would receive any Dignity from Man I receive not Honour from Man And thus knowing his real descent to be from Above I am from Above it was equal to him to be reputed the Son of a King or a Carpenter But he rather chose the latter because being himself a King I am a King he would not accept his immediate descent from another King lest it should be said that that made him King David often vaunted of him as his descendant to come twice fourteen Generations before he was born And Abraham rejoiced to see his day But he was so far from valuing himself upon these great Ancestors one a King and the other a King's Fellow that he rather seemed to disown them Before Abraham was I am If David called me Lord how am I his Son He made no other use of his Royal Pedigree but to convey by them a corrupted descent from Adam who standing attainted of Treason against Heaven Christ himself under this Attainder was baptized in his own Blood to restore the rest of Mankind into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God For Christ himself thus falling under the Law became as guilty of the breach of it as any common Man notwithstanding his personal Holiness For we are none of us guilty of this Sin in Fact but only by construction of Law in the Article of our Birth which falls upon us before we know Good or Evil and so it did upon the Humanity of Christ And this Law thus falling upon him was as just a cause of his Death as it is of ours Nor can his Death be assigned to any other cause but this This Death of Christ was the most unlikely thing that ever happen'd in the World His Disciples could not believe it till they saw it He did not die of Age being about thirty three at his Death He did not die of natural Infirmity having the power of Health by which he preserved his own and restored others He did not die in Battel For his Kingdom was not of this World else would his Servants have fought that he should not have been delivered unto the Jews He did not die by any sudden Accident the Angels having charge over him lest he should dash his foot against a stone He did not murder himself but made all his Efforts to escape the greatest of which was his asking his Life of God Nor was he murdered by others because there was a form of Law in doing it And yet he was not executed by Law because there was no Law then in being by which he could be executed for the Crime of which he stood accused The time that Christ lived in the World was after the destruction of the Jewish Monarchy and during the continuance of the Roman Conquest under which the Jewish Nation being then Subjects were permitted the exercise of their Religion and Priesthood but not of the Civil Power which they had while their Monarchy was in being So that if a Jew had committed any Offence against the Jewish Law which was not an Offence against the Roman Law he was liable to no other Punishment than the Censure of the Jewish Church
my Heart's desire But when that is done I know no Business I have with the Dead and therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by returning unto the Dust which is the Sentence of that Law from which I claim a Discharge But that I shall make my Exit by way of Translation which I claim as a dignity belonging to that Degree in the Science of Eternal Life of which I profess my self a Graduat according to the true intent and meaning of the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures And if after this I die like other Men I declare my self to die of no Religion And in this let no one be concerned for me as a Desperade For I am not going to renounce the other parts of our Religion but to add another Article of Faith to it without which I can't understand the rest And if I lose this additional Article by failing in this Attempt I have as much Religion left still as they that pity me Nor have I in all this spoken presumptuously or from fancy having said nothing but what he that made me said before me And if it be possible to believe too much in God I desire to be guilty of that Sin I dread no Hell but the Sentence prepared against them that despise the Gospel Behold ye Despisers and wonder and perish Behold what Behold Men coming from the East and from the West to sit down in the Kingdom of God and you your selves shut out Shut out from what To be shut out from Virtue and Holiness Justice and Truth perhaps would be no uneasiness to us all but to be shut out from an eternal Draught of an eternal Stream of Love from the Marriage Feast of the King's Son from the view of his Bride adorn'd in her Glory and from all the Joys of Nuptials for ever this will be a Torment created by Man to himself through Unbelief beyond the Exquisition of Tyrants or the Execution of Devils It seems conceivable that Man by his change into the other World will not lose any species of his present Affections or have any new ones added to them But that all those Passions which are now begun in him will there increase upon him for ever He that is holy let him be holy still and he that is filthy let him be filthy still And then tho Man cannot now conceive by what Objects his Passions or Affections will be thus augmented yet by his present feeling of them he may conceive the nature tho not the perfection of his future Joys or Torments Did you ever feel a fit of Envy Multiply that by thousands till you want a Name of Number and then call that the thousandth thousandth part of one of the Torments of Hell Did you ever feel a Pang of Love Spend your days in Algebra and carry on the Account of it to Heaven and there add to that for ever till your Desire fail and you 'll ne'er begin to sum the Total All Life is Motion and therefore cannot be eternal without an eternal Motion For whenever it comes to stagnate the Patient rots and stinks and dies The most pleasant Enjoyments being kept long in our hands pall our Appetites to them And hence the smallest addition to what we had before seems greater Riches to us than all our former Possessions And every new Thought that falls into our Studies proves a greater Diversion to us than all our former Knowledg Now in all Inventions of Men towards Perpetuity of Motion they never attempt any thing beyond a Circle which moving it self by Rotation comes to the same place again But the Motion calculated for the maintenance of Eternal Life is made to move in a direct Ascent for ever in every reach of which we see and taste and seel what we never did before The Water that I shall give him shall be a Spring of living Water rising up to Everlasting Life But behold ye Despisers and wonder Wonder at what Wonder to see Paradise lost with the Tree of Life in the midst of it Wonder and curse at Adam for an original Fact who in the length of one day never so much as thought to put forth his hand for him and us and pull and eat and live for ever Wonder at and damn our selves for Fools of the last Impression that in the space of seventeen hundred years never so much as thought to put forth our hands every one for himself and seal and execute the Covenant of Eternal Life and live for ever But behold ye Despisers and wonder and perish Perish how Why perish under the same Malice against the Son of God for ever They blasphemed God and yet repented not to give him Glory being concluded under Unbelief from the day of Adjournment of Time into Eternity proclaimed by the last of the seven Heralds of Angels who setting his right foot upon the Sea and his left foot upon the Earth lifted up his hand to Heaven and swore by him that lives for ever That Time should be no longer AND now bear with me a little while I prepare my self for being shown as a Monster 'T is no news for Believers and Unbelievers to be the Admiration of one another They wondered at his Works and he marvelled at their Unbelief And this is a marvellous thing that ye know not whence he is who hath opened the Eyes of one born blind Therefore to be even with the World at once he that wonders at my Faith I wonder at his Vnbelief And stare at me as long as you will I am sure that neither my Physiognomy Sins nor Misfortunes can make me look so unlikely to be translated as my Redeemer was to be hang'd And tho perhaps I may be the sport of some yet I can't but think and say again that whoever is designed for Happiness will meet with some of that Pleasure in reading which I have had in writing and whoever are not so appointed no one can lament them more than I do Nor can I think how any Man that is right in his Religion can be wrong in his Morals which are all set to right in him as an incident to his Faith The Blood of Christ hath an incident quality which cleanseth from Sin But this quality is subsequent and accidental to that legal Sanction and first Appointment of it to take away the Law of Death And he that understands this aright never makes any use of his own personal Virtues as an Argument for his own Salvation lest God should overbalance against him with his Sins Nor doth God ever object a Mans own personal Sins to him in the day of his Faith because Christ had no Credit given him for his personal Holiness in the day of his Death And therefore till I am more sinful than he was holy my Sins are no Objection against my Faith And because in him is all my hope I care not almost what I am my self This I know from