Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	abide_v	able_a	part_n	28	3	4.1922	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27065	The vain religion of the formal hypocrite, and the mischief of an unbridled tongue (as against religion, rulers, or dissenters) described, in several sermons, preached at the Abby in Westminster, before many members of the Honourable House of Commons, 1660 ; and The fools prosperity, the occasion of his destruction : a sermon preached at Covent-Garden / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Fools prosperity.	1660 (1660)	Wing B1448; ESTC R13757	102,825	412

say that there is none of them all but when they shall come unto their beds of death and are to grapple immediately with the painful terrours of the King of fears and to stand or fall to the dreadful tribunal of the living God then except the Lord suffer them to fall into the fiery lake with senseless hearts and seared consciences would give ten thousand worlds were they all turned into gold pleasures and imperial crowns to change their former courses of vanity c. into a life of holy preciseness strictness sincerity and salvation Oh! when the heavens shall shrivel together like a scroll and the whole frame of nature flame about their ears when the great and mighty hills shall start out of their places like frighted men and the fearful reprobate cry and call upon this mountain and that rock to fall upon him when as no Dromedary of Egypt nor wings of the morning shall be able to carry them out of the reach of Gods revenging hand no top of Carmel no depth of sea or bottom of hell to hide them from the presence of him that sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb no rock nor mountain nor the great body of the whole earth to cover them from that unresistible power that laid the foundations of them no arm of flesh or armies of Angels to protect them from those infinite rivers of brimstone which shall be kept in everlasting flames by the anger of God when their poor and woeful souls shall infinitely desire rather to return into the loathed darkness of not being and to be hid for ever in the most abhorred state of annihilation then now to become the everliving objects of that unquenchable wrath which they shall never be able to avoid or to abide and to be chained up by the omnipotent band of God among the damned spirits in a place of flames and perpetual darkness where is torment without end and past imagination I say at that dreadful day and that day will come what do you think would they give for part in that Purity which now they persecute and for the comforts of true-hearted holiness that now they hate and yet without which as it will clearly appear when matters are brought before that high and everlasting Judge non shall ever see the Lord or dwell in the joyes of eternity Nay I verily think there are no desperate despisers of godliness or formal opposites to grace which do now hold Holiness to be Hypocrisie Sanctification singularity practice of sincerity too much preciseness but when the pit of d●struction hath once shut her mouth upon them and they are sunk irrecoverably into that dungeon of fire would be content with all their hearts to live a million of years as precisely as ever Saint did upon earth to redeem but one moment of that torment so p. 159. The common conceit of these men is that civil honest men are in the state of grace and that formal professors are very forward and without exception but true Christians indeed are Puritans Irregularists exorbitants transcendents to that ordinary pitch of formal piety which in their carnal comprehensions they hold high enough for heaven They either conceit them to be Hypocrites and so the only objects for the exercise of their Ministerial severity and the terrours of God or else though the Lord may at last pardon perhaps their singularities and excesses of zeal yet in the mean time they dissweeten and vex the comforts and glory of this life with much unnecessary strictness and abridgement Now of all others such Prophets as these are the only men with the Formal Hypocrite exactly fitted and suitable to his humour for however they may sometime declaim boysterously N. B. against gross and visible abominations and that is well yet they are no searchers into nor censurers of the state of Formality and therefore do rather secretly and silently encourage him to sit faster upon that sandy foundation then help to draw him forward to more forwardness c. See also his description of a Puritan p. 132. So in his Direct for walking with God p. 172. Good-fellow meetings and Ale-house revellings are the drunkards delight but all the while he sits at it he is perhaps in a bodily fear of the Puritan Constable Many such Passages tell you how the word Puritan was commonly interpreted in Oxford Northamptonshire and whereever Learned and Holy Mr. Bolton was acquainted And having mentioned his testimony of the use of that word I shall add somewhat of his discovery of this spirit of malignity and detraction that worketh in the Antipuritans In his Disc of Hap. p. 190 191. he saith The reverence and respectful carriage to godly Ministers which may sometimes be found in the Formal Hypocrite doth grow towards distast and disaffection when they press them by the powerful sense and piercing application of some quickning Scriptures to a fervency in spirit purity of heart preciseness in their walking supernatural singularity above ordinary and moral perfections excellency of zeal and a sacred violence in pursuit of the Crown of life to an holy strictness extraordinary striving to enter in at the strait gate and transcendent eminency over the formal righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees to a nearer familiarity with God by prayer daily examination of conscience private humiliations meditation upon the endless duration in a second life to a narrow watch over the stirrings and imaginations of the heart and expression of holiness in all the passages of both their callings c. Points and ponderations of which nature are ordinarily to him so many secret seeds of indignation and many times breed in his formal heart and cold affection exasperation and estrangement if not meditations of persecution and revenge Sanctification preciseness purity holiness zeal strictness power of godliness spiritual men holy brethren Saints in Christ Communion of Christians godly conferences conceived prayers sanctifying the Sabbath family exercises exercise of fasting and mortifying humiliations and such like are commonly to men of thus temporising temper and lukewarm constitution terms of secret terrour and open taunting And sometimes they villanously sport themselves with them and make them the matter of their hateful and accursed jeasts that so they may keep under as much as they can in disestimation and contempt the faithful Professors and Practisers thereof whom naturally they heartily hate and also seem thereby to bear out the heartless stourishes of their own formality with greater bravery Hereupon it is that if they take a child of God but tripping in the least infirmity against which too perhaps he strives and prayes with many tears c. slipping only in some unadvised precipitant passage of his negotiations c. they take on unmeasurably then they cry out These are your men of the spirit these are the holy brethren these are your precise fellows these are they which make such shew of Purity and forwardness you see now what they are

an universal hatred of known sin and an actual conquering of it so far as to live out of gross sin which some call mortal and to be weary of infirmities and to be truly desirous to be rid of all and to be willing to use Gods means against it Thus it is with the sincerely Religious but not with these hypocrites that deceive themselves Joh. 3. 19 20. Rom. 7. 24. Luk. 13. 3 5. Rom. 8. 1. to the 14. Gal. 6. 7 8. The hypocrite hath not only some particular sin which all his Religion makes him not willing to see to be a sin or to forsake but his very state is sinful in the main by the predominancy of a selfish carnal interest and principle And he is not willing of close plain dealing much less of the diligent use of means himself to overcome that sin because he loveth it 9. This Vain Religion is not accompanied with an unseigned Love to a life of holiness which every true believer hath delighting to meditate in the Law of God with a practical intention to obey it and delighting in the inward exercise of grace and outward ordinances as advantages hereunto desiring still more of the grace which he hath tasted and grieving that he knoweth and trusteth and loveth and feareth and obeyeth God so little and longing to reach higher to know and love and fear him more Psal 1. 2. and ●19 1 2 3 4 5 9 10 c. Heb. 12. 14. 2 Pet. 3. 11. Matth. 7. 13 14. But the self-deceiver either hath a secret dislike of this serious diligence for salvation and loving God with all the soul and might because he is conscious that he reacheth it not himself or at least he will not be brought to entertain any more then will stand with his carnal ends 10. A Vain Religion doth not so far reveal the excellency of Christs image in his servants as to cause an entire Love to them as such and to delight in them above the most splendid and accomplisht persons that are strangers to the life of grace and so far to love them as when Christ requireth it to part with our substance and hazard our selves for their relief Thus do the truly Religious Psal 16. 2. and 15. 4. 1 Joh. 3. 14. Matth. 10. 40. 11. 42. and 25. 34 35 40 42 45 46. But the hypocrice either secr●tly hateth a heavenly holy life and consequently the people that are such because they seem to condemn him by overgoing him and differing from him or at least he only superficially approveth of them but will forsake both Christ and them in tryal rather then forsake his earthen God I have now shewed you what the self-deceiver wants in which you may see sufficient reason why his Religion is but Vain II. WE are next to shew you How these Hypocrites do deceive themselves and wherein their self-deceit consisteth It may seem strange that a man of reason should do such a thing as this when we consider that truth is naturally the object of the understanding and that all men necessarily love themselves and therefore love what they know to be simply good for them How then can any man that hath the use of reason be willing to be deceived yea and be his own deceiver and that in matters of unspeakable consequence But it is not as falshood nor as deceit that they desire it but as it appeareth necessary to the carnal ease and pleasure which they desire The way by which they deceive their own hearts consisteth in these following degrees 1. The hypocrite resisteth the Spirit of grace and rejecteth the mercies offered in the Gospel and so by his refusal is deprived of a part in Christ and of the life of grace and the hopes of glory which were tendered to him 2. But withal he is willing of so much of this mercy as consisteth with his sinful disposition and carnal interest He is willing enough to be happy in general and to be saved from hell fire and to be pardoned and to have such a heaven as he hath framed a pleasing imagination of 3. And therefore he maketh him up a Religion of so much of Christianity as will stand with his Pleasures profits and reputation in the world that so he may not be left in despair of being saved when he must leave the world that he must loved The cheap and the easie parts of Christianity and those that are most in credit in the world and that flesh and blood have least against these he will cull out from among the rest and make him a Religion of passing by the dearer and more difficult and spiritual parts 4. Having gone thus far he perswadeth his own heart that this kind of Religion which he hath patcht up and framed to himself 〈…〉 Religion the Faith the Hope the Charity the Repentance the Obedience to which Salvation is promised And that he is a true Christian notwithstanding his defects and that his spots are but such as are consistent with grace and that his sins are but pardoned infirmities and that he hath part in Christ and the promises of life and shall be saved though he be not of the preciser strain When he committeth any sin he confidently imagineth that his confession and his wishing it were undone again when he hath had all the p●easure that sin can give him is true repentance and that as a penitent he shall be forgiven And thus while he thinketh himself something when he is nothing he deceiveth himself Gal. 6. 3. He hath a counterfeit of every grace of God A counterfeit Faith and Hope and Love and Repentance and Zeal and Humility and Patience and Perseverance and these he will needs take to be the very life and image of Christ and the graces themselves that accompany salvation 5. Having got this Carkass of Religion without the soul he makes use of all those things to confirm him in his deceit which are appointed to confirm true Christians in their Faith and Hope When he reads or thinks of the infinite Goodness Love and Mercy of God he thinks God could not be so good and merciful if he should refuse to save all such as he When he readeth of the undertaking and sacrifice of Christ and how he is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world he confidently hence concludeth that a Saviour so gracious that hath done and suffered so much for sinners cannot condemn all such as he When he readeth of the extent and freeness of Grace in the promises of the Gospel he concludeth that these promises belong to him and that Grace could not be so free and so extensive if it did shut out all such as he When he observeth the Mercies of God upon his body in his friends and health and credit and prosperity he concludeth that surely God loveth him as a child in that he dealeth so Fatherly with him If he suffer adversity he thinks that it is the Fatherly chastisement of

say God forbid that any should deny it But when it comes to the particulars and you find that he commandeth you that which flesh and blood is against and would cost you the loss of worldly prosperity then you will be excused and yet that you may cheat your souls you will not professedly disobey but you will perswade your selves that it is no duty and that God would not have you do that which you will not do Like a Countrymans servant that promiseth to do all that his Master bids him but when he cometh to particulars threshing is too hard a work and mowing and reaping are beyond his strength and plowing is too toylsome and in the conclusion it is only an idle life with some easie charres that he will be brought to This is the Hypocrites obedience He will obey God in all things as far as he is able in the general But when it comes to particulars To deny himself and forsake his worldly prosperity for Christ and to contemn the world and live by faith and converse in heaven and walk with God and worship him in Spirit and truth to love an enemy to forgive all wrongs to humble our selves to the meanest persons and to the lowest works to confess our faults with shame and sorrow and ask forgiveness of those they have injured these and other such works as these they will not believe to be parts of obedience or at least will not be brought to do them Poor souls I have stood here a great while to hold you the glass in which 〈◊〉 you were willing you might see your selves 〈…〉 you will yet wink and hate the light if you perish in your self-deceiving who can help it Briefly and plainly be it known to thee again whoever thou art that hearest this that if thou have not these five characters following thy Religion is all but vain and self-deceiving 1. If Gods authority as he speaketh by his Spirit Word and Ministers be not highest with thy soul and cannot do more with thee then Kings and Parliaments and then the world and flesh Mat. 23. 8 9 10. 2. If the 〈…〉 ●●●ing glory be not practically more esteemed by thee and chosen and sought then any thing or all things in the world Mat 6. 21. Col. 3. 4. Joh. 6. 27. 2 Tim. 4. 8 9. Matth. 22. 5. Luke 18. 22 23. Phil. 3. 20. 3. If thou see not such a loveliness in holiness as being the image of God as that thou unfeignedly desirest the highest degree of it Matth. 5. 20. Psal 119. 1 2 3 c. Phil. 3. 12 13 14. 4. If any sin be so sweet and dear to you or seem so necessary that you consent not and desire not to let it go Mat. 19. 22. Phil. 3. 8. Psal 66. 18. 5. If any known duty seem so costly dangerous troublesome and unpleasant that ordinarily you will not do it Mat. 16. 24 25 26. Psal 119. 6. In a word God must be loved and obeyed as God Christ must be entertained as Christ Heaven must be valued and sought as Heaven and Holiness loved and practised as Holiness Though not to the height of their proper Worth which none on earth is able to reach yet so as that nothing be preferred before them BUt yet there is one more discovery which if I pass by you will think I bawk a chief part of my text An unbridled tongue in a Professour of Religion is enough to prove his Religion vain By an unbridled tongue is not meant all the sins of our speech If any man offend not in word the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body But in many things we offend all Iam. 3. 2. Every unwarrantable jeast or angry word or hasty rash expression is not enough to prove a mans Religion to be in vain Though Christ say that we shall answer for every idle word he doth not say we shall be condemned for every idle word But when the tongue is unbridled and is not kept under a holy Law but suffered to be the ordinary instrument of wilfull known sin or of gross sin which men might know and will not this proves the person void of holiness and consequently his Religion vain It s true every Hypocrite hath not an unbridled tongue some of them have the bridle of moral precepts and some of Religious education and some of the presence and awe of persons whom they esteem common knowledge with natural mansuetude and moderation doth bridle the tongues of many an Hypocrite But as every wicked man is not a drunkard or fornicator and yet every drunkard or fornicator that liveth in it is a wicked man so every Hypocrite hath not an unbridled tongue his vice may lie some other way but every man that hath an unbridled tongue is an Hypocrite if withall he profess himself a Christian The sins of the tongue are of three sorts 1. Such as are against piety 2. Such as are against Justice 3. Such as are against Charity 1. Against Piety that is directly against God are Blasphemy Perjury rash swearing swearing by creatures light and unreverent using of Gods Name and attributes and Word and works pleading for false doctrine or false worship disputing a●ainst truth and duty scorning at godlines●● or reasoning against it These and such impieties of the tongue 〈◊〉 the evidences of prophaneness in the speakers heart though some of them much more then others and if the tongue be not then bridled all is in vain 2. Sinfull speeches against Justice and charity are these reproaching Parents or Governours or neighbours railing and reviling cursing provoking others to do mischief or commit any sin disputing against and disswading men from truth and duty and hindering them by your speeches from a holy life and the means of their salvation calling good evil and evil good lying slandering false witness-bearing back-biting extenuating mens vertues and aggravating their faults beyond the certain apparent truth receiving and reciting and carrying on evil reports which you know not to be true endeavouring to cool mens love to others by making them seem bad when we cannot prove it mentioning mens faults and failings without a call and just occasion unchast immodest ribald speeches cheating and deceitful words to wrong others in their estates with other such like But undoubtedly that sin of the tongue which the Apostle here had particular respect to was the reproaching of fellow-Christians especially upon the occasion of some differences of judgement and practice in the smaller matters of Religion The Judaizing Christians gave liberty to their tongues to reproach those that refused the use of those ceremonies which they used themselves and placed much of their Religion in The quarrel was the same that was decided by the Apostles Act. 15. and by Paul Rom. 14. and 15. and throughout the Epistle to the Galathians And this is the Religion that James calls vain here which was much placed in ceremonies with a pretense of