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	prove_v	18	3	5.4131	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50417	A sermon concerning unity & agreement preached at Carfax Church in Oxford, August 9, 1646 / by Iasper Maine ...	Mayne, Jasper, 1604-1672.	1647 (1647)	Wing M1477; ESTC R32062	36,818	45

perswades them to unity of opinions and minds in these words Now I beseech you Brethren that you be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgement Lastly that he might with the greater successe do this and like a skilfull reconciler might win upon all sides he for a while layes aside the Authority of his Apostleship and mingling Request and Conjuration with Exhortation and Advice he acts the part of an Apostle in the forme of a Petitioner in these words Now I beseech you Brethren by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ c. Upon these parts the Apostles mild insinuation and addresse of himselfe and the severall Degrees of unity and concord in speech in Assemblies and in Opinions to which he here exhorts the Corinthians I will build my future discourse In the ordering of which I will begin with the Apostles submissive insinuation or addresse of himselfe in these words Now I beseech you Brethren by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ For the clearer and more usefull handling of this part of the Text First it will be necessary that I speake somthing to you of Saint Pauls person the Preacher here in the Text and of his calling to the Ministery which well considered will conduce very much to the removall of a certaine dangerous error received of late into the minds of too many unlearned vulgar men among us Which is That Universities and Bookes and Studies and Learning are so farre from being necessary preparations to make a Preacher of the Gospell that any Lay-man though perhaps brought up to a manuall Trade of a vocation of Husbandry or attendance upon Cattel if he finde by himselfe that he is called by the Spirit of God may put himselfe into Orders and take the Ministery upon him And thus enabled from above without the forme of Ordination or those other slow tedious lazy helps of sitting twenty years in a Colledge to understand the Bible may in the few minutes of a powerfull Inspiration spring up an Apostle and go forth a Preacher of the Word of God To this perswasion they have been invited by two sorts of Examples in the Scripture one in the Old Testament the other in the New In the Old Testament Doe you not read say they that God called Elisha from the Plough to be a Prophet And doth not Amos tell you in the 7. Chapter of his Prophesie at the 14. Verse that he was a Herdman and a gatherer of Sycamore fruit Then for examples in the New Testament pray what were the Apostles were they great Schollars or did Christ send to Athens for them were they not Fishermen 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 fame 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●e 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

and he was guilty of that unedifying crime forsooth of being eloquent in the Pulpit Others perhaps entertain'd it coldly from S. Peter because he had not been bred up in the School of Demosthenes nor tasted of the finer Arts and educations of Greece In short one and the same saving Truth for want of a little right judgment in the Hearers to compare it comming from several mouths past into divers opinions first and then these opinions broke forth into divers factions And is not this my Bretheren our very case Do but consider the present distempers of our poor divided Kingdome and pray what hath been the true root and spring of so much variance and hatred and heart-burning among us What hath crumbled us asunder and turn'd one of the purest and most flourishing Churches of the world into a heap of Heresies and confusion Hath it not been the very word of God it self In which all minds I confess should agree and which should be the rule to compose all our strifes and before whose decisions the greatest Scholars Disputes and the meanest mans Doubts should fall down and mutually imbrace and kiss each other How comes it then to pass that Religion which was ordained by God to be the oyl to cure our wounds should prove only the oyl to feed and nourish our combustious Whence is it that the Scripture that Sword of the Spirit should prove to us only {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} a two-edged sword and that no other use should be made of it by us but only to be the weapon of our Conflicts by committing the edges and making them enter duell and combat with each other Truly my bretheren all the reason that I can give you for this is That some perhaps wel minded people but not of understandings either strong or learned enough to reach the true sense and meaning of some places have stept beyond their measure and have presumed to interpret more then they have well understood Others of a more modest but credulous composition have thought that only to be the right meaning of the Word of God which they have heard from the mouth of the Preacher which they most affect Others of a more dangerous policy finding that the Scripture rightly expounded would extreamly make against the plot of their dark proceedings and that the holy Ghost cannot be bribed to finde Texts to make covetousness sedition or the slaughter of their Brethren or Rebellion against their Prince lawfull have with some formall helps of piety and zeal put to their expositions made the Scripture speak only those plausible untruthes which most complied with their ends and the peoples Fancy Hence the better to arrive to their Estates by the distractions of their minds they have dealt with them as cunning Anglers do with silly fishes troubled the stream and blinded them and then made them their prey The way to do this was to affront and disgrace clamour down all the primitive Truths for some Generations taught among them and to recall from their sepulchres and dust all the old intricate long since buried Opinions which were the madnesse of their own times and the Civill Warre of ours With which opinions they have dealt as the Witch of Endor dealt with her Familiar raised them up to the people clothed in a long mantle and speaking to them in the shape and voyce of a Prophet Hence come those severall acceptions and interpretations among you even in your ordinary discourses of one and the same plaine but sinisterly understood places of Scripture One following the practice of all the purest ages of the Church thinkes the Sacrament of Baptisme is to be administred to Infants Others who would certainly be a strange sight to the Congregation if they should appear the second time at the Font of late are taught to thinke that none are to be baptized but such as are old enough to be their owne Godfathers and can enter into Covenant with God and promise for themselves Some because it hath beene called a binding of the spirit to fetter their devotions in a set forme of Prayer have banisht that Prayer which Christ prescribed to his Apostles out of their Closets as well as Temples Others of as rectified a piety think no Prayer so likely to finde acceptance with God as that which was conceived and put into forme by his Sonne I should tire your patience too much to give you an exact Catalogue of all the rotten opinions which at this present swarm among us One who hath computed the Heresies which have sprung up in this Kingdome within these five years sayes they have doubled the number of those which were in Saint Austins time and then they were very neer fourscore One is a Chiliast and holds the personall Reigne of Christ upon Earth Another is a Corporealist and holds the death of the Soul with the Body Nay as 't is said in Africke a Lyon will couple with a Tyger from whence will spring a Libbard so certain strange unheard-of double-sex't Heresies are sprung up among us not able to understand what he would hold himselfe You shall have an Arrian and Sabellian lodged together in the same person Nay which is yet worse whatever Celsus spoke in scorn and Origen in vindication of our Redeemer Christ and his Mother hath of late trodden the Stage again and appeared to disturbe the World One I tremble to speak it hath called the Virgin Maryes chastity into question And others have spoken of the Saviour of the World so suspiciously as if he had been a thing of a stoln unlawfull Birth In short there want only some of those Munster men among us of whom Sleydan writes where one calleth himselfe God the Father another God the Sonne A third Paraclete or God the holy Ghost to make our Babel and confusion of wilde opinions at the height In this miserable distraction then where Heresie and Errour hath almost eaten up the true Religion And where all the light at the Gospel which shines among us is but like that imperfect light at the Creation which shined before the Sunne was placed in the firmament A light creeping forth of a dark Chaos and blind masse and strifefull heape of jarring Elements In this thick fogge of strange Doctrines I say which hath condenst it selfe into a cloud which hath almost overspread this whole Kingdome from which Truth seemes to have taken slight and made way for Ignorance to stile it selfe once more the Mother of devotion what way is there left to reconcile our minds or to beget one right knowledge and understanding of the wayes of God among us Truly I know none but that which Saint Paul here prescribes in the Text which is that we endeavour as near as we can to be of one mind and of one judgment But how shall this be brought to pass unless all judgments were alike clear and unbiassed Or unless laying apart all partiality and affection to their own