Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	aaron_n	call_v	heat_n	24	3	8.4263	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50410	Certain sermons and letters of defence and resolution to some of the late controversies of our times by Jas. Mayne.	Mayne, Jasper, 1604-1672.	1653 (1653)	Wing M1466; ESTC R30521	161,912	220

men altogether unletter'd men called from mending nets to preach the Gospell If this were so That God according to his good pleasure without any consideration of study or height of parts chose simple unlearned unstudied men to be Prophets and Apostles and Teachers then why should any thinke he hath so confined or entailed his free Spirit or vocation of men upon great parts and studies that he may not if he please call the like unstudied simple men from the Plough or Fisher-boat or Stall or Shop-board to be Ministers of his Gospel and Teachers of his people now My Brethren you see I have not prevaricated or diminished ought of the strength of the Argument which is urged in favour of Lay-mens preaching In answer to which laying aside all partiality to my selfe and prejudice against them I shall with the same spirit of meekness and Candour with which Saint Paul here in this Text bespoke his Corinthians beseech you who heare me this day to observe and weigh and consider well this which I shall say for a Reply First Far far be it from me so to flatter the place of my Education or so to biass my beleef by any false ovevarluing of humane Industry or great parts that I should pinion as it were or put limits to the power of the Almighty Or should be so irreligiously bold as to gain-say that piece of his Gospell which compares his holy Spirit to the Wind which bloweth where it listeth If they who thus pretend to a private Inspiration doe meane that whatever God did in the times heretofore he is able to doe now I shall easily grant it And here in the presence of you all confesse my selfe to be of their opinion Nor shall I make any doubt or scruple at all to say that if we looke upon what God is able to doe by the same power by which he was able to raise up Children to Abraham out of stones or to speake yet more neerly to the Argument in hand by the same power that hee was able to make a Herd-man a Prophet or a Fisher-man an Apostle he is able in our times also if he please to make the meanest Tradesman one of the greatest Luminaries of his Church Since to an Omnipotent Agent whose gifts are meerly Arbitrary and depend wholly upon the pleasure of his owne will the greatest endowments of men and the least are alike easie But though he be able to doe this and in the ancient times of the Scripture have imparted his Gifts without respect of Persons yet whether he now will or whether in our times hee doth still thus extraordinarily raise up Teachers to himselfe is extreamly to be doubted For here with all the Christian gentleness and reason which may possibly conduce to the clearing of this doubt were I to argue this Controversie with one of those men who invade our function and from gathering of Sycamore fruit step up into the Pulpit I would onely aske him this question What Commission he hath thus to usurp upon our Office Or who signed him his patent Since the Apostle tells us in the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewes at the fourth Verse A place well worth your marking my Brethren That no man taketh this honour of a Priest to himselfe But he who is called of God as was Aaron I know his common answer will bee that God hath called him to this Office by the secret Instinct and Motion of his Holy Spirit But then he must not take it ill if I yet farther aske him by what signes or markes or testimonies or tokens he can either ma●… it reasonably appeare to himselfe or others that God hath dealt with him as he dealt with some of the Prophets or Apostles called him from his Trade by such a motion of his Spirit Elisha we know made Iron swim and knew mens Closet-discourses in a farre Countrey which was a sure and certaine signe that God had called him to be a Prophet The Apostles also we know wrought many of Christs miracles which was a most infallible signe that God had chosen them to be Apostles If any of these men who derive their warrant from the same sacred spring can make Iron swim or like Elisha remaining here in their owne Israel can tell us what the King of Syria saies in his Bed-chamber Or if like Saint Peter they can cure fevers and diseases by their bare shadowes passing over them Or if like the rest of the Apostles having never before knowne Letters they can of a sudden speake all Languages the Controversie is at an end It would bee a very great sinne against the Spirit of God to deny that hee is in them of a Truth But if all the proofe and signe they can give us that they have him be onely a strong perswasion of themselves Nay if by an infallible Illumination they could assure themselves that they have him yet as many as have not the like infallible Illumination to assure them so too will not be guilty of an unpardonable offence if they suspect they have him not For here I must once more repeat my former Question and aske by what effects or signes of the Spirit men shall know them to be called By what will some man say why Doe you not heare them preach expound Scripture unfold Prophecies interpret Parables nay plucke the veile and cloud from the Booke of Mysteries it selfe the very Revelation Can any of you great Schollers with all your study of Philosophers Fathers Councells Schoole-men Historians Oratours Poets either hold your Congregations longer or send them away more edified And will you yet ask Questions Or doubt of the certainty of their vocation I must not dissemble with you if I could meet with an unlearned Handicraft-man who without study can doe this to the same height and measure of Truth as those unjustly-cryed downe learned and well-studied men doe I should begin to alter my opinion And should reckon him as hee deserves in the number of the inspired But alas my Brethren as I am not come hither to disparage the guifts of the Holy Ghost in what person soever I finde them or to perswade that Scripture rightly expounded is not one and the same from the mouth of a Priest or an inspired Lay-man so this I must freely say to you That as many of those strange Teachers as I have heard have expounded Scripture indeed and have ventured upon some of the hardest places of the Prophets But then if all my studies of the Bible assisted with all those holy uncorrupted learned helps which might enable mee to understand it aright have not deceived me their expositions and Sermons how passionately delivered or how long soever are evident proofes to mee that they have not the Spirit If they had they would never certainely expound Scripture so directly contrary to his meaning Or make the writings of the Prophets or Apostles weare only that present shape not which the holy Ghost hath

adorn'd with the Images of some of the persons in the Glorious Trinity therefore I must acknowledg all Images of that sort ought to be taken down Pray Sir how long hath the single Topick of your meer Assertion been of such forcible Authority that without any other proofe you should think me obliged to hold such Images worthy of expulsion because you say they are Had you either from Scripture the most perfect Rule for the Decision of Controversies or from Reason Though in your esteem but a peece of nature corrupted urged any one necessary Argument to prove them unlawful or things which deserve to be called the Idolatry or Superstition of the place perhaps being a servant to Demonstration though a favourite of the muses I should have been one of the first that should have cryed out for Reformation But this not being done by you nor indeed possible to be done by any other though my sermon speak not of any Image of any person in the Trinity yet I conceive all Arguments which shal strive to prove that no picture of any person in the Trinity ought to be the Ornaments of a Church or Chappell Window will be as frail and brittle as the Glass in which they stand Sir I have said in my last Letter and shal repeat it in this that 't is not you but nature and the numerous places of Scripture which forbid to make any picture of God either taken for the Divine essence common to all the three persons or for the person of God the Father distinct from the other two which perswade me that any such picture besides the impossibility is unlawfull And therefore you need not have put your self to the unnecessary trouble to hang your Margin with quotations taken out of Bellarmine or Aquinas since all such quotations applyed to that which I have said and you have cited which is That all pictures of God are a breach of the second Commandment do strike me no more then if I should enter conflict with those dead Arras-Captains which in hangings threaten to assault the spectatour with imaginary woven Lances Much less need you so superfluously have called S. Paul from the third heaven to prove that because he once quoted this Greek Hemistick out of Aratus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that we are the Off-spring of God God is not like to gold silver or stone graven by the art of mans device Since by that which I have said of him in my former Letter you are obliged to testifie for me that I have urged convincing reasons to prove he cannot be which Reasons as borrowed from nature and the schoolmen with whom sir I hope you are not implacably fallen out I do not urge as the supream Iudges of what I there prove but as subservient mediums which carry a musick and consent to that which God hath said of himself in the more perfect Rule of his Word So that for doing this to charge me as you do with the Study of the Lullian Art is either nonsence in your Letter or an Illation which resolvs it self into a contemptible mistake which is That because Lullius who wrote of Chymistry was called Raymundus I who have read another Raymundus who wrote of Natural Theologie am to be called a Lullianist which is a Logick as wretched as if I should say Mr Cheynell hath read Cajetane and hath made him a marginal note Therefore he is a seeker of the Philosophers Stone and study's to convert the Ore and Tin of the kingdom into Gold Sir Your Logick is not much mended when you say That the Word thereupon is sometimes Illative sometimes Ordinative For take it which way you will As it stands in your last letter you are bound to give me thanks as a Poet that I dealt not with you as a Sophister and proclaimed your infirmity for having utter'd a contradiction Which contradiction I confess might have been avoyded by the insertion of the omitted word or two for want of which you say my sophisticall Criticism is abortive and came but with one legg into the World In answer to your next Paragraph I shall most readily grant That 't is a high fault to picture God Because any such Draught not being possible to be made of him but by resembling of him to something w●…n is able to afford a Species or Idea to the sense would besides the Falseness of it where a gross material figure should represent a pure invisible Essence degrade him from the honour which he ought to hold in our Minds which are his Temple in which Temple if he should hang up in a frame or table which should contract and shrink him to the finite Model of a man or any other creature 't were the way to convert him into an Idoll and so as I have often said to sin against the second Commandement which as it may be broken by spending our Worship upon false Gods so it may also be broken by our false portraitures and apprehensions and venerations of the True The case of the Saints is far otherwise For whose pictures turn'd into Idols as I have no where pleaded For as Idols I acknowledge they are the crime of those who worship them so as Ornaments you will never be able convincingly to prove but that they may be innocently retain'd and be lookt on by those who do only count them speechless Colours The like may be said of al Pictures made of Christ which pretend to express no more of him then is capable of Representation and exceed not the lines and symetry of his Body and flesh For I shal grant you that to Limb his Divinity or to draw him in both his Natures as he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God as well as man is altogether impossible and not in the power of any Painter though we should recall Apelles or Parrhasius from their Graves and once more put Pencils into their Hand You know sir if a man should have his picture drawn 't would be an impossible task if he should enjoyn the Painter to limb his soul as well as the proportion and feature of his Body since the Soul is a thing so unexpressible to the sense that it scarce affords any Idea to be understood by the mind Sir if you have read Aristotles Books 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you wil there find that the proper Objects of al the senses besides those of the Eye though much grosser then Spirits or Souls cannot be brought into picture A Painter may draw a flower but he cannot limb a scent He may paint fire but he cannot draw heat He may furnish a table with an imaginary banquet but he that should offer to taste of this banquet would find himself cozen'd The Reason is because Nature it self makes it impossible for the proper Object of one sense to be the Object of another And finds not art or colours for any thing invisible But only for those Superficie's Symetry's and sensible parts of Things