Root

1 Tim. vi. 10.ROOT. Covetousness or Desire is the Root of all the Evils, and of all the Sins that we commit. The Root, that is, the Fountain, the Cause, the Occasion. Ne sit inter vos radix germinans fel & amaritudinem.Deut. xxxix. 18. Let there not be seen among you pestilential Men, who draw down upon you the Effects of the Anger of God. Roots of Gall and Bitterness. Radicem verbi inveniamus Job xix. 28.contra eum. Let us seek against him Occasions of Discourse and Reproof; or let us find Opportunities to accuse him. The Hebrew says, The Root of the Word is in me. I am always in a Condition of defending myself sufficiently. Deus evellet Psal. li. 7.radicem tuam de terra viventium. God will pluck up thy Root out of the¹ Land of the Living. He will snatch you out of the World, and destroy you.

The Root may also denote the Race, the Posterity. Radix justorum non commovebitur.Prov. xii. 3. Jerem. xii. 1. The Root of the Just shall not be disturb’d, shall not fail. And Jeremiah; Whence is it that the Wicked prosper in all things? Thou hast planted them, and they have taken Root. In Daniel, and in the Books of the Maccabees, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Persecutor of the Jews, is represented as a young Sprout or Sucker, or Root of Iniquity, proceding from the Kings, the Successors of Alexander the Great. And Jesus Christ, in his Passion, is de-scribed to us as a Root illnourished, plant-ed in a dry and barren Soil. Sicut radix de terra sitienti. And elsewhere Isai. liii. 2. Isai. xi. 1, 10.he is call’d a Root of Jesse.

In a contrary Sense St. Paul says, that the Rom. xi. 16, 17, 18.Jews are, as it were, the Root that bears the Tree, upon which the Gentiles are ingrafted. And that the Patriarchs are the pure and holy Root, of which the Jews are, as it were, the Branches. Si radix sancta, & rami. And elsewhere, that Jesus Christ is the Root, upon which Christians depend, and from whence they derive their Life and Subsistence. Radicati Coll. ii. 7.& super ædificati in ipso.

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