Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	according_a	friend_n	great_a	145	3	2.1548	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66416	A sermon preached upon the fifth of November, 1678. By a Protestant divine	Williams, John, 1636?-1709.	1678 (1678)	Wing W2723; ESTC R214125	17,281	35

said to bring Nebuchadnezzar against them Jer. 25. 9. So that a Church and people may come thus to suffer through Gods wise and powerful ordination as they by their sins have provoked him to anger and when it hath done this work and served this end and that by it they are brought to repentance the same hand that brought it on will carry it off 2. I shall proceed to the second general which is to observe the ways in which they shew this enmity or the course which they take for the destruction of the Church and that is deep consultation and joynt endeavour They take crafty counsel and are confederate And this is the most likely way to accomplish a design when it is cunningly contrived and closely prosecuted For all the action in the world without good consultation may be baffled and disappointed and the shrewdest consultation without vigorous action will come to nothing but when both these do meet it hath the fairest hopes of success And this the Adversaries of the Church are not wanting in who do too often surmount in both those that have the best cause and whose greatest interest it is to defend it But there are particular ways which such do take As 1. Slandering their adversaries and raising false reports of them They are then dealt with as the primitive Christians were by their persecutors who were dressed up in the skins of such Creatures as would the more exasperate and invite the wild beasts to which they were exposed to tear and devour them they shall be represented as Hypocrites and Deceivers as Hereticks and Infidels as pernicious and dangerous So it was with the Christians of old who were said to be Atheists and contemners of all Religion and guilty of the foulest crimes as Sacriledge Sedition Incest and Murder and it is no wonder when thus represented that some of the best of the Heathenish Emperers made Laws and Edicts against them and followed them with severe persecutions as Trajan Adrian and Antoninus till they were made to understand better by their Apologists And so it happens often in the World that Religion for want of being understood and the Religious for want of being truly known are evil intreated by them that mean well But as such by mistake and misreport may become Enemies to what is good thinking it to be evil so bad men are willing to have it so and do therefore take all occasions to asperse Religion that they may expose that and those that are better than themselves to obloquy and reproach for by how much the more they can cast dirt upon them by so much the more do they think themselves vindicated And this is no small artifice of the Church of Rome in the foul dealing which they shew to those that will not own its authority and submit to its unlimited Jurisdiction they will take Hell it self for calumnies and say any thing that will serve to disgrace them They will dress them up as the poor people that are condemned for Heresie by the Inquisition in Sanbenito's and Coats painted over with Owls and Devils to make them ridiculous or worse and to take the people off from condoling their misfortune they will describe their adversaries in Characters of blood and soot and what not to set the people on with fury and render them implacable Thus we find they did by Luther whom they will needs have to dye just when he had entertained his Friends with merry conceits and had been entertained at a plentiful Supper and that immediately his Soul was carried away by Devils when the truth is that after he had been long troubled with a pain in his breast and was brought by it under great weakness he was in continual expectation of death though he ceased not to Preach as he had any intermission and the night that he died though weak yet set down with his Friends discoursing about the state in Heaven and whether we shall then know one another and then retiring according to his custom to private Prayer he found that his pain increased and perceiving after some hours that his end drew near he exhorted his Friends and declared his perseverance in the Faith and praying with great fervency concluded that and his life together with Father into thy hands I commit my spirit thou hast redeemed me O God of truth So they tell us that Calvin was given to gluttony and Epicurism and was branded for Sodomy at Noviodunum where he was born whereas he was a man of great abstinence never eating any thing for Ten years before his death till evening and is cleared of the latter by Jacob le Vasseur Dean of Noviodunum in his Book which he published of the Annals of that Church in 1633. Thus would they make our Religion and all that profess it look miscreantly in the eyes of the world that they might fall on us without mercy and worry us with some reputation 2. By dividing the Church and setting one part of it against the other It 's the policy of the Church of Rome that though they have more and greater divisions amongst them as about the seat of infallibility it self which is a fundamental principle with them than we yet that there is a superiour power to crush them and though they cannot be reconciled and put to an end yet that that puts them to silence and so they are kept from doing mischief But where persons have a free liberty and few or no restraints laid upon them they are tempted to break into parties and those parties are apt to break one against the other by which means they are often made a prey to the common Adversary And I pray God this be not the event of this state with us I am sure there hath not been wanting endeavour on their part to effect it endeavour I say to make and aggravate and perpetuate differences that so all might lie at their mercy How do they sort with all persons strike into all Societies take upon themselves the guise of all parties that they may bring each to war against other and fight the battels of Rome whilst they fight one with the other and all may fall a Sacrifice to its fury 3. By downright force that when other means do fail or that they are weary of expecting what will be the issue of them they do without more ado run to their Arms and bring the Cause to a decision in open Field In open Field say I I wish that were all nay they will assassinate and massacre blow up or burn or do any thing that either treachery or cruelty can teach them This is too true a Character of the Church of Rome That ever since it first drew the sword in the time of Hildebrand never knew what it was to sheath it again but that hath prosecuted it's Cause by force of Arms to this day It 's that which hath claimed a Jurisdiction over Princes and a power to depose and