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	let_v	27	3	4.9234	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

which are first capable to be seen and then to be transcribed into a picture But why that part of Christ which after his Resurrection when it began to cease to be any longer a part of this visible World was seen of above five hundred brethren at once may not be painted Nay why the figure of a Dove or of cloven Tongues of fire wherein the third person in the glorious Trinity appeared when he descended upon our Mediator Christ and sate upon the heads of the Apostles may not be brought into imagery I must confess to you I am not sharp-witted enough to perceive Though this I shal freely say to you and pray do not call it Poetry That to maintain that Christ thus in picture may be worshipt is such a peece of Supe●…stition as not only teaches the simple to commit Idolatry but endeavours to verifie upon him in colours the reproach which the calumniating Jews stuck upon his person and to make him thus painted a Seducer of people As for your fourth paragraph which assaults me the second time with an Argument without an Edge which is that the Sun and Images cannot be put in the scales of comparison in point of fitness to be preserved having in my former Letter already answered you I shal not put my self to the needless trouble the second time to confute it For answer to your Fifth pray Sir read that part of my Sermon which you have corrupted into a quibble And there you shal find that what I say of clean linnen is not as you say a shifting Fallacy But I there say that which you wil never be able to controule which is That by the same reason that you make Surplices to be superstitious because papists wear them you may make Linnen also to be superstitious because papists shift And so conclude cleanliness to be as unlawful as Surplices or Copes Sir this is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I confess the same Answer twice served in to you not out of scarcity or barrenness or for want of another Reply but because much of your Letter is but crambe repetita a carret twice boyled Your sixth paragraph is a faggot bound up with more sticks in it then you without poetical Licence can possibly gather from my Letter where Sir I only promise you when ever you shal cal upon me to derive to you all the ancient parts of our English Liturgy from Liturgy's which were in the Church before popery was born Of which if any part be to be found in the Rubricks of the Church of Rome your logick wil never be able to prove that therefore 't is to be rejected as trash and trumpery in ours Good things Sir lose not their goodness because they are in some places mingled with superstitious Nor as I told you before do Davids Psalms cease to be a piece of Canonical Scripture because they are to be found bound up in the volumn with the Mass. Sir if what ever is made use of by the Pope or touches upon Rome should be superstitious the River Tiber would be the most blameable river in the World What you mean by a prelatical Faction here in England or what they borrowed from the Rituals or pontifical of Rome is exprest to me in such a mist of words which sound big to the common people and signifie nothing to the wise that I must confess my dulness I do not understand you If you mean that they inserted any new peeces into the old garment of our Cōmon-prayer-book and those borrowed from the Missal or Breviary of Rome I beleeve Sir abstracting from those alterations made in the prayers for the King Queen and Royal issue which the Death of Princes exacted unless for constancy sake you would have them allow of prayers for the dead and in King Charls and Queen Mary's days to pray still for King Iames and Queen Anne which would be a piece of popery equal to the invocations of saints you will find nothing modern or of such new contrivance as past not Bucers Examen in the raign of Edward the sixth And was confirmed by Act of Parliament in the raign of Queen El●…zabeth In saying this in their defence who had the ordering of such changes I hope Sir you will not so uncharitably think me imbark't in their Faction which truly to me stil presented it self like the conceal'd Horses under ground a fiction made to walk the streets to terrifie the people as to perswade your self after my so many professions to fall a sacrifice to the Protestant Religion that it can be either in the power of the Church or court of Rome to tempt me from my Resolution Which is to go out of the world in the same Religion I came in Sir I gave warning in my last letter not to venture your writings upon the Argument which deceives none but very vulgar understandings and which I in my Sermon cal the Mother of mistakes which is from an accidental concurrence in some things to infer an outright similitude and agreement in all Because Bellarmine says tradition is a better medium to prove somethings by then a private spirit and because I in this particular have said so too you tacitely infer that I and Bellarmine are of the same Religion which is the same as if a Turk and a Christian saying that the Sun shines you should infer that the Christian is a Mahumetan and for saying so a Turk I confess you do not say we are both of the same Religion but that I in preferring Tradition which you your self in your seventh paragraph tllow to be the Constant and universal Report of the Church before he Testimony of the Spirit speaking in the Word to the Consciences of private men am more profane than he Heer sir you must not take it ill if I expose you to the censure of being deservedly thought guilty of a double mistake The one is that if Bellarmine in this particular were in an Errour and if I had out-spoken him in his Errour yet the Laws of speech will not allow you to say That in an unprofane subject either of us is profane more heretical or mistaken you might perhaps have said and this though a false Assertion might yet have past for right Expression But to call him positively and me comparatively more profane because we both hold That a Drop is more liable to corruption then the Ocean or the testimony of al ages of the Church is a fuller proof of the meaning of a text in Scripture then the solitary Exposition of a man who can perswade none but himself is as incongruous as if you should say that because Bellarmine wrote but three Volumns and Abulensis twelve therefore Abulensis was a greater Adulterer then He. Your other mistake is That you confound the Spirit of God speaking in the Scripture with the private Spirit that is Reason Humour or Fancie of the person spoken to Sir let that blessed Spirit decide this controversie between us