Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	ghost_n	holy_a	word_n	6,811	5	4.3810	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33089	Rome's additions to Christianity shewn to be inconsistent with the true design of so spiritual a religion in a sermon preached at Edinburgh, in the east-church of St. Giles. Feb. 14. 1686 : to which is prefixt a letter, vindicating it from the misrepresentations of some of the Romish-Church / by James Canaries ...	Canaries, James.	1686 (1686)	Wing C421; ESTC R11810	26,945	42

that Exhortation wherewith the Apostle addresses the Galatians in the beginning of this Chapter upon the like occasion Stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage For in Jesus Christ c. Ye have heard what is the peculiar Design of our most holy Faith and how much that is perverted and imposed upon by that Religion which the Church of Rome has endeavoured to shuffle in in its stead And therefore if ye have any regard to your Souls ye'll never abandon so holy so rational so generous a Religion and embrace so gross and carnal a Superstition in place of it I presume I need not use any more Arguments from the competition of these two after what has been already discoursed having all along so manifestly shewn how destructive and ruinous any such Religion as the Roman is to the main and special Design of true Religion in the general and far more of that which availeth in Jesus Christ So that having so fully discovered the precipice it were to suppose an equal want of sense both in the Speaker and Hearers to press you with any Reasons not to leap over it when none but such as really are uncapable of any can ever be guilty of the Folly Yet I hope it will not be impertinent to offer some more general Motives to your consideration that those who either could not follow the thread of the Discourse closely enough or who having done this yet perhaps are not so nearly touched with it as they ought to be may meet with what may happen to be both more plain and convincing unto them if indeed any thing can be more so Now our Saviour does aggravate the Infidelity of the Jews with this that if he had not come and spoken to them they had not had sin but now they have no cloak for their sin If he had not done the works among them that no other Man did they had not had sin John 15 22. 24. So say I to you If ye had not been educated and trained up in the true knowledge of the Son of God if ye were not furnished with all the means necessary for being fully convinced of the Excellency of our Religion infinitely beyond all the false pretending ones that ever inveigled the World then perhaps ye would have no sin that is not so great a degree of it though ye should have been of the Communion of Rome But now if ye shall fall away and turn your back upon that Church wherein ye have been bred and which comes as near to the primitive truth and simplicity of the Christian Religion as that of Rome does to the Jewish and Pagan and that is as near as may be if I say now ye shall make Shipwreck of your Faith then you will have no Cloak for your sin 'T is sad Language in the 6th of the Hebrews and fourth Verse It is impossible for those who were once enlightned and tasted of the heavenly Gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and tasted of the good word of God and of the powers of the world to come if they once fall away to be renewed again unto repentance seeing they have crucified the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame An Expression which quadrates even in the literal sense but too well to the Church of Rome her Mass equally performing both these And indeed if we be mistaken in our Religion as it stands in opposition to Popery we may justly use S. Victor's Argument and tax God himself with it saying That it is He that hath deceived and deluded us For since we have got all our Faculties from him both those of our Reason and of our Senses it is evident that whatever these do necessitate us unto and do unavoidably force us to admit must be refounded upon him from whom that necessity was at first derived But sure it is impossible for any abstractly speaking to advert unto the native Dictates and Principles of his Reason or ever consult the certainty which his senses afford him and yet be Popish too And of this the greatest Champions for Rome have been so conscious as not finding any imaginable way how to reconcile their Religion with the Faculties of Man to cut the troublesome knot they could not loose and cry down all Reason as the greatest Heretick in the World And had but that ever been at Rome or in Spain in such a concrete manner as that Fire or Rack could have got hold of it we should long e'er now have heard of the sad tortures it had endured in the Inquisition And that I may not be thought to say this gratis I do appeal to Gonterius Perronius Arnoldus and that Jesuite Verronius who triumphed mightily in his bold Method to confound all the Protestants which was by denying and renouncing all the Principles of Reason with an open Mouth and brazen Brow and never to deign an Answer to any Argument drawn from it against any of their Tenents but directly and downright to deny it So that he maintained that these Maxims of Reason Impossibile est idem simul esse non esse Quidquid est quamdiu est necessario est Non entis nulla sunt accidentia neque attributa and such like ought utterly to be refused And let no Papists say that these were but private Authours and they are not concerned in them For this Book of Verronius had all the approbation that their Church could give it unless a general Council had been called for that end For the Pope himself hugg'd it very kindly the King of Spain back'd it with his Authority Cardinals and Archbishops and Bishops and the whole Clergy of France recommended it Nay the very Sorbon put its Seal to it also Sure the Bishop of Condom's Book that makes such a noise was never better vouched But we need not run to this For I defie them to shew me any of their Writers upon Transubstantiation who has not some whining kind of Language or other against our Reason and Senses And the Authour of that late pretended Answer to the Funeral of the Mass addresses himself to his Reader thus pag. 4. Here I humbly intreat the Protestant Reader says he to reflect that in the Mysteries of Religion we must captivate our Vnderstanding that is to say suspend it from asserting what it might judge had it nothing to relie upon but the sole relation of our senses to obey Christ God will have as an Homage due to him and his Veracity this proud faculty of Man which is earnest to judge of all submit to his word Thus he and surely very like the Wolf to the Sheep in the tender of peace between them For the first Article he proposed to them was that they would lay aside all the Mastives by which they were guarded from him For well he knew that if once they were rendred so defenceless they

Circumcision availeth any thing nor Vncircumcision but Faith which worketh by Love THat which through the assistance of God I intend to pursue from this Text is That the Christian Religion is of the most spiritual Frame and Constitution the most exactly fitted and proportioned as to the immaterial Being of the Object which it regards so to the reasonable Nature of the Subject in which it ought to reside That it is of a more noble and elevated Design than were any of those course Models which either Wickedness or the Necessity of Affairs did ever introduce among Men And so that it does not consist in outward performances and bodily gestures in certain Schemes of Sacrifices or a ceremonial Worship in solemn Pageantries and pompous Shews in external Rites and Usages or carnal Ordinances and a sensible Oeconomie but in a holy and virtuous Life and Conversation in Faith Love Devotion Humility Patience Contentment Sobriety Temperance Chastity in Righteousness Charity Sincerity Meekness Generosity and all those other Graces which concur to renew the Image of God in the Soul of Man and to dispose him for that purest Fruition of the Original it self in Heaven which is equally apt to encourage him in the diligent practice and to teach him what should be the peculiar Kind of his Obedience upon Earth For in Jesus Christ c. And indeed this Character I have given of the Religion which is acceptable to God through Christ Jesus is so obviously held forth to us in these Words that it ought rather to be reckoned as a Paraphrase of than any formal Deduction from them For by Circumcision must be understood the whole ceremonial Institution of the Jewish Law that word being ordinarily used in this sense by our Apostle in all his Epistles because the Circumcision was the most eminent Ceremony of that Dispensation and so most proper to give a Name to the whole And by Uncircumcision we must also mean any other kind of carnal Worship of a like nature unto that of the Jews and which was either customary among the Heathens or should afterwards be invented by any of those who should pretend to follow the Doctrine of Jesus Christ For by it the Apostle could not intend any other form of Religion but what was animal and was chiefly consummated in corporeal Observances and outward Formalities since there is none of a middle kind which could be directed to the true God that can imaginably fall between the notion of such a one and that genuine sort which is exprest by the subsequent part of the Text Faith which worketh by Love as is palpable And therefore it is certain that he could not use both these two Uncircumcision and Faith which worketh by Love as but different Phrases for the same thing because then he had really contradicted himself by saying that the former availeth not in Jesus Christ when immediately he did insinuate the contrary of the latter And so by Uncircumcision he must needs have meant that kind of Religion which stood in contradistinction to this other and consequently that which I have now described as the true importance of that word So that the Exposition of the Text runs most naturally thus Neither such an Administration as was that of the Jews nor any other whatsoever of no finer Essence nor Intent can signifie any thing to those who look for Salvation through the Holy Jesus for the main design and scope of that Religion whereof he was the Authour is onely Faith which worketh by Love Now by this we can onely understand that generous and suitable temper of mind whereby the Nature of Man is exalted to the greatest height of Perfection that it is capable of on this side of its glorious Estate For 't is not possible to conceive a more emphatick or comprehensive account of all that is requisite for making up the most spiritual and divine Religion than what is implied in Faith working by Love all that can be called Sanctity or Goodness being fully comprised in that Grace thus operative and prolifick It were easie to shew this both from the complexion of such a lively Faith and from the dependance which all that is truly great or noble has upon it But that lies out of my present Road and so it shall suffice to vouch it by those two other places where the Apostle repeats this same Text and onely alters the Expression here in the one calling it the keeping of the Commandments of God and in the other a new Creature Christianity then or that which availeth in Jesus Christ is a complete Systeme of the most refined and improved Morality such as wholly tends to accomplish and adorn the Souls of Men. And therefore it is such an ingenuous and spiritual Religion so reasonable a service as equally excludes and does transcend all those low and carnal Schemes which either Childishness or Superstition did reconcile to those fond and doting Creatures that have ever been wheedled with them Thus you see that I have not raised any other Doctrine from this Text but what the Apostle himself did directly intend when he wrote it and so what is the immediate sense of the Words and that I have not ventured so much upon Inferences as Interpretations in making it afford a Subject patly enough accommodated for that which this Discourse has still in its view And now that I may go on the more methodically with it I shall First Give a short account of Religion before Christ And Secondly What was the special and principal Design of that which he preached to the World As to the First It is certain that in the State of Innocence our first Parents were wholly employed in gratitude and love to their Maker in admiring the beautifull Frame of this World and reflecting the Glory of such a Workmanship upon him by whose fingers it was fashioned in mutual love to and complacency in each other and such like pure and suitable Virtues And all this without any external Ceremonies or Formalities any outward Schemes of Religion or Models of Devotion save onely that they being lodged in Flesh as well as we could not but use those gestures and postures which were necessary for them in any publick Worship so to wit as the Saints will do in Heaven after the Resurrection And the reason is because God being a Spirit and so not capable to be the direct Object of material Motions those which formally respect him must needs proceed from a Spirit too And therefore all corporeal Actions come in but by accident into Religion and cannot be pertinent to it but so far as either they tend to occasion some proportionable ones in the Soul as when one in a prostrate posture is thereby moved to thoughts of Humility or else for the mutual subserviency and decent administration of publick Worship among many Now in that blessed Estate there could not but be so very little need of any outward Observances upon either of