Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	bishop_n	great_a	year_n	2,667	5	4.4520	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28383	A plain and brief explanation upon the church catechisme different from what hitherto hath been extant : wherein the first elements and grounds of religion are reduced to such plain and familiar questions and answers ... : to which is added, a plain and useful tract of confirmation / by Nathaniel Blithe ...	Blithe, Nathaniel.	1664 (1664)	Wing B3197; ESTC R5761	48,274	155

we receive the Spirit of Obsignation and Confirmation we are but Babes in Christ in the meanest sense Infants that can do nothing that cannot speak that cannot resist any voilence exposed to every rudeness and perishing by every temptation But therefore as God at the first appointed us a Ministry of a new birth in Baptism so also hath he given to the Church the consequent Ministery of a new strength in Confirmation The spirit moved a little upon the waters in Baptism by vertue of which motion it is made the Laver of Regeneration so that by vertue of this Sacrament we receive the first Principles of life are adopted into Christ's family made his living members who before were dead in sins and trespasses But in Confirmation he makes us able to move our selves he so bountifully assists us and so powerfully supplies our manifold infirmities that we are able to work out our own Salvation with fear and trembling In the first he is the Spirit of life but in this he is the Spirit of strength and motion Baptisma est nativitas unguentum vero est actionis instra motus as a learned Author observes At the adminstration of Baptism we are born again we are received into the Congregation of Christ's Flock and are entitled to the glorious inheritance which he by his bloodsheding purchased for mankind but in Confirmation we are enabled to move and act as becometh those who are redeemed with so high a price As in our natural birth we are first Infants unable to help our selves and are assisted by Nurses or others who take the charge of us to feed us and to lead us and to assist us in every respect but after some years our strength encreases and we are able to move and help our selves Even so it is in our spiritual birth first we are Babes in Christ unable to move one step in the paths of holiness and therefore the Church in her wisdom provides Sureties who receive the charge of us to feed us with such food as is convenient for us to nourish us to assist and advise us in the weighty affairs of our souls but when we are at age to help our selves then we take their care and trust upon our own shoulders stand upon our own legs publickly promising to live the lives of Christians strictly performing our solemn engagements which in time past was covenanted on our behalf and to preserve us from slipping and falling the Spirit of God is given to assist our pious undertakings and to strengthen us in the encountring of those raging enemies which we must expect to be assaulted with and when good Christian people had this notion of Confirmation rightly understood the true nature of it they were then very zealous for it and flocked in great multitudes to receive this divine ministry from the hands of the Bishop And time was in England as Bishop Taylor relates even since the first beginnings of Reformation when Confirmation had been less carefully ministred for about six years when the people had the first opportunities of it restored they ran to it in so great numbers that Churches and Church-yards would not hold them insomuch that the Bishop of Chester was forced to impose hands on the people in the fields and was so oppressed with the multitudes that he had almost been trod to death by the people and had died with the throng if he had not been rescued by the civil Power And it might have been hoped that the disuse of it of late for so considerable a number of years might have made it more highly prized now that it is again restored but alas our own experience finds it far otherwise it continues still too much neglected not only for want of a right understanding of this holy Rite but also by entertaining a belief that it is unlawful many are deterred from desiring this ministry in regard that they are enformed that not one tittle of this is to be found in Gods word and hereupon supposing it hath no Divine Warrant they presently condemn it as an Innovation a piece of Will-worship and so consequently sinful VVherefore I shall in the next place prove the lawfulness of this Discipline it is a plant of our Heavenly Fathers planting and so no Innovation or VVill-worship it is a Primitive and Apostolick Rite and hath been continued in the Church in all Ages as a wholsom Discipline and so no upstart invention or new device to raise the Power or advance the Grandeur of proud Prelates and when I have cleared these two then the lawfulness of this Rite will appear as clear as the Sun at the Noon day This Divine Rite of Confirmation proceeds from above it is warranted unto us by no meaner a person than the Eternal Son of God who in his own person hath instituted and hallowed this Rite by submiting unto it no sooner came he out of the waters where he had been baptized by John but immediately he is confirmed by the Spirit which in the shape of a Dove descended upon him He is now to enter upon the stage of the world and to conflict with divers enemies he is forthwith to be led into the VVilderness to be assaulted by the Prince of darkness who now exercises all his cunning and malice to make a prey of this tender Lamb of God But before he undertakes these hard tasks the Spirit of the living God rests upon him not that he had any need of the descent of the Holy Ghost or of his powerful assistance in regard that infinite power that appertained to his Godhead was able to repel the greatest rage of the Devil and all his accursed instruments but all this was done for our sakes to instruct us in this solemnity of our Religion he submitted to this Rite that we might follow his example and work out our Salvation by the same graces in the like solemnities which St. Augustine hath very well expressed affirming Christi in Baptismo Columbam unctionem nostram presigurasse the Dove in Christ's Baptism did represent and prefigure out unction from above that is the descent of the Holy Ghost upon us in the Rite of Confirmation And therefore to this and other external ministrations we must believe our selves obliged to submit and make use of them in the working out our own Salvation being encouraged thereto by the president of this great Captain of our Salvation Christ was Baptized and so must we but after Baptism he had a new ministration for the reception of the Holy Ghost and because this was done upon our account therefore we must follow so good an example And this being done immediately before his combate with that proud infernal Spirit it plainly describes unto us both the time when it ought to be received as also that great advantage that attends the ministration of it After we are baptized when we are capable of understanding the solemn engagement of our Baptism and enter upon the personal performance