Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	bear_v	let_v	love_v	3,848	5	6.0540	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29333	Faith in the just victorious over the world a sermon preached at the Savoy in the French Church, on Sunday Octob. 10, 1669 / by D. Brevall ... ; translated into English by Dr. Du-Moulin ...; Foy victorieuse du monde dans les justes. English	Bréval, Monsieur de (François Durant), d. 1707.; Du Moulin, Peter, 1601-1684.	1670 (1670)	Wing B4402; ESTC R2130	23,314	40

conformity of the Just with God when he saith in the eighth chap. to the Romans That they are become one spirit with him which is an evident mark of the highest perfection of resemblance Well then Brethren from so many reasons must we not in the end conclude That the Just are born of God and ought not only to be called his children but are so in effect as saith Saint John in our Epistle yet it is but one of the conditions for the which the Text that we have taken may be applied fitly to them We must see Secondly whether the other necessary conditions are found in them that is if they triumph over the world and if they triumph by faith This we shall see in the two parts that remain of this Discourse But before we begin I crave one moment of reflection upon the first For it is not enough to know who are those whom Saint John saith to be born of God but we must observe whether we our selves be of that number it is not enough that adoption or even regeneration doth assure us of it but we must seek into the centre of our hearts and into the most secret passages of our lives whether we bare the Image of God and if we have that resemblance of holiness and grace which doth properly establish our right of Filiation for whosoever is unlike his Father is unjustly called his son and they are not only the Philosophers that will have this resemblance and this rapport between the production and its principle indispenseably necessary to the essence of their relation neither are they the modern Divines that introduce this necessity Have not the most ancient Fathers been of this opinion Judge ye of it by this fine learned expression of Gregory Nazianzen who says the Son is the definition of the Father that is the Son is but the expounding of what his Father is so the resemblance between the Father and the Son is no less indispenseable then between the definition of a thing and the thing defined it self which another Gregory hath more clearly expressed when he called the Son the Image of the Father But what need is there of reasons and Authorities to prove to you the necessity of this resemblance since Jesus Christ himself Saint John and Saint Paul assure us of it when they tell us that a man is the childe only of him whose works he does It is then a truth out of question That we are not the children of God but so far as we resemble him by imitation of his vertue and by this conformity of our life and innocence with his By this principle it is easie to discern whether we are born of God and it is impossible to be deceived upon so certain a rule It is the same that our Apostle gives us in the second chapter of his first Epistle If you know saith he that God is just know that whosoever doth righteousness is born of him But because this rule may possibly be too vast and some despair is to be feared if to be the children of God we must be like him in all the excellencies of his holiness and in the great number of vertues comprehended in his Justice the same Apostle in the same Epistle reduceth the necessity of this resemblance to the love of our Neighbour Beloved saith he let us love one another for love is of God and whosoever loveth is born of God O how few would be found born of him though there needed but this one resemblance to be born of him since so few love their brethren do you love your brethren you that tear them by your calumnies do you love them you that take pleasure in their disgraces and are tormented with their prosperities in good earnest do you think you love them who seek so many occasions to hurt them and shun all occasions to help them no no! let us not flatter our selves but confess ingenuously that we do not love our brethren while we harbour grudges against them coldness sharpness envy suspition contempt with infinite other dispositions and thoughts that are more criminal It is not then of us that St. Iohn speaks in our Text because not loving our brethren it is impossible we should be born of him the hatred we have for them destroying all the resemblance that otherwise we should have of him for what resemblance can we have of any person if we hate what he loves since love and hate are the two great Movers which carry on the rest of our Passions there is necessarily a hatred between two wills when one hateth what the other loves Will you then be the children of God St. John hath told you in two words what is necessary for that Love one another for whosoever loveth is born of God What! do you refuse to purchase so great an honour at so cheap a rate Consider the glory of being children of such a Father and see how easily you may obtain it And that you may have a greater desire to it I will shew you the illustrious victory that they get over the World who are born of God it is the second part of my Text and of my Discourse THE SECOND PART Amongst infinite circumstances that compose an illustrious victory Clarior laus est quo clarior est quem vice●is Curt. l. 6. Non est gloriosa victoria nisi ubi su●int glo●i sa sa certamina Amoros lib. ● Offic. the most considerable is the force of the Enemie which is overcome whence a great Historian took occasion to say That a Triumph was so much the more illustrious as be was whom we triumph ever and St. Ambrose with the same spirit saith That no Victory is glorious but after a difficult combate and a pertinacious Resistance therefore the Scripture describes with so much care the powerful Armies of Pharaoh Holophernes Sennacherib and all the other great enemies of Israel for thereby a greater ground is afforded for admiring the Conqueror and to adore the greatness of God the chief cause of the victory even of the Giant whom David overcame the sacred History marks exactly all that might render him terrible that the triumph of the generous Shepherd might be so much the more commended as there was more difficulty to overcome so powerful an enemy I must follow the Example the Scripture gives me and let you see what is the strength of this world which is overcome in the Text by the children of God that you may judge of the glory of the Triumph and that so I may make you the more desire it But first we must know what world is here spoken of it being a word very equivocal in Scripture All the different significations that it makes use of may be reduced to two principal since it never speaks of the world but in a physical or moral sense that is the world is still put in a natural or mystical signification in Scripture Again the natural world is

of the Son of God to speak strictly can belong to none but him and it is by a metaphor meerly and a kinde of usurpation that it is attributed to others The Scripture doth fully witness it when it says so often that he is the only Son or only begotten of God and when by Excellence it saith in Rom. 5.32 That He is God's own Son and when it says in Hebr. 1. That it is to him alone that God bare this witness in Psal 2. Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee And finally that in the 110. Psal it is of none but him that the Father speaks when he says according to the Latin Version I have begotten thee of my bosome Now we find nothing either in Divinity or in the Scripture it self of this great Priviledge and of this proper and particular Title of the Word but the perfection of resemblance that he hath with his Father and which other things have not The holy Spirit it self which proceedeth from the Father as the Gospel teacheth us and who hath the same nature with him yet is not called the Son and it is not said that he is born nor that he is begotten because he doth not proceed formally as Divines teach us by way of resemblance since at the least as they say very rationally the holy Spirit is the production of Love and not of Knowledge so that proceeding from the Will and not from the Understanding of God it cannot have a formal resemblance with its principle Philosophie it self teaching us that resemblance is not an effect of the Will but of the Understanding because it is proper to the Will to carry it self to its Object whereas the Understanding attracts his Object by imprinting on it his resemblance Whence it is that Aristotle says that the Understanding becomes all things not by changing it self into them but on the contrary by changing them into it self Moreover it is from thence that the Production or Term of the Will is called a Weight a Propension an Inclination which does not at all signifie resemblance but the production of the understanding is called Verb Image Representation Therefore Scripture never gives these Names to the Holy Spirit but to the Son only whose Name saith St. John Rev. 19. is The Word of God Now this word Verb signifies either the thought or the word and we know that the thought is the representation of the object that one thinks of and the Word is the Image of the thought it self so that both in the one and in the other sense the word Verb applied to the Son in the Gospel is a name of resemblance But St. Paul willing more clearly to expound himself saith to the Corinthians and to the Colossians That he is the Image of God and to the Hebrews That he is the splendor of his Glory and the figure of his Substance according to the Latin Version or of his Person according to the Greek Original Thus by all these reasons and so many authorities it is properly the second Divine Person that is born of God Yet it is not of that our Text speaks when St. John saith That all which is born of God overcometh the World by Faith for though Jesus Christ who is this Adorable Person hath overcome the World as himself doth witness by the same Evangelist in the 16th chapter of his History verse 33. and though it be also in some manner by means of faith that he hath triumphed yet it is not of him that the Text speaks because it is easie to comprehend by that which goeth before and that which cometh after that it is of them that have faith that these words should be understood and that they cannot belong to Jesus Christ who though he be the Author and Finisher of our Faith as St. Paul calls him in the XIII Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews yet he hath it not formally since he cannot have faith of that which he hath the knowledge the experience of the sight So when St. John speaks here of that which is born of God he speaks but of those which have onely an imperfect resemblance of him differing from that of Nature and yet he speaks not of all sorts for First it is clear that by that which is born of God he means not things meerly material which have only a Trace or Footstep of likeness to him it is true that God having produced them and they representing to us as they do all some of his perfections God may justly be called their Father Job in this sense calleth him the Father of the rain and saith It is be that hath begotten the dew he might say as much of all other creatures though destitute of intelligence and reason since besides that God made them they have moreover this advantage to represent him in some sort in the judgment of St. Paul who saith in the first Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans the 20. verse that the invisible things of him are clearly seen from the Creation of the world being understood by the things that are made But the end of our Text shews evidently that he speaks not of that sort of creatures although in some respects it may be said they are born of God Secondly neither is it of Angels or Men in the quality of intelligent and reasonable creatures for though the Angels are the least imperfect images of God which gave occasion to a learned man to call them The bright Looking Glasses of the Godhead and though by the right of this resemblance there is nothing in Nature that more justly deserves the title of the children of God then they do and though himself by the mouth of Job calls them so often by this glorious Name yet it is manifest that it is not of them that St. John here makes mention when he speaks of those who are born of God since he speaks of such as are in the world and have sought with it and have triumphed over it by faith which you see cannot be applied to Angels Nor doth he speak of men considered only as reasonable for though reason hath made them fair Copies and illustrious Images of the Divinity to answer what St. Paul highly in their praise saith that they are the Image of the Glory of God and to deserve that the Prophet Malachy should call God their Father by the general right of their Creation yet it is not of them at least in the quality of reasonable creatures only that the text we expound speaks who overcome the world by their faith and not by all the strength of their reason and understanding Then they must needs be either the Just or the Glorified that are here spoken of Doubtless they are not the Glorified for though they have this noble resemblance of Glory with God who doth almost transform them into himself as St. John expounds it in the third of his first Epistle and that they are called in the