Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	acknowledge_v	lord_n	zion_n	19	3	8.5807	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B09701	The life of a Christian which is a lamp kindled and lighted from the love of Christ, and most naturally discovereth its original, by the purity, integrity and fervency of its motion, in love to its fellow-partners in the same life. Briefly displayed in this its peculiar and distinguishing strain of operation. As also some few catechistical questions concerning the way of salvation by Christ. Together with a post-script about religion. / By Isaac Penington, (junior) esq;.	Penington, Isaac, 1616-1679.	1653 (1653)	Wing P1176; ESTC R181602	61,844	104

and they fall out afterwards as they did before and so their end prove worse then their beginning A. No for Christ undertaketh to preserve them to keep them safe from all evils and dangers in so much as they shall not fall upon them further then shall be for their good to work in them and for them all their works to keep off wrath that it shall seize no further upon them then he himself in wisdom and love seeth good to let it out In a word God shall never have more to say to them but from him nor they never have more to do with God but through him who loveth them perfectly and who as he began so he will continue meerly from the strength of his own love to perfect his own work in them which though his wisdom may cause him to carry on very mysteriously yet his love will not let him fail doing of it very safely Q. What must he do who is instated in this Salvation in and for whom this Redemption is begun by Jesus Christ A. He must be continually sacrificing himself by the Spirit of the Lord in which he that is in Christ lives and moves and acts until he become an whole burnt-offering unto the Lord until all his light all his life all his will be swallowed up and perfectly lost in the Light in the Life in the Will of the Lord. Not only until his corruption be dissolved and consumed but till his very nature and being in all the powers motions and operations of it be changed into the Nature and Being of the Lord until the new creature hath wholy spred it self all over him and he be become wholy a new lump This he who is not truly changed cannot do and he who is truly changed cannot but do A Postscript about Religion THere have always been two kinds of Religions in the world besides the several strains in each and the several ways of jumbling each together which the vain heart of man hath invented to entangle and vex it self withall The one Heathenish or Devilish The other Heavenly or Divine The one wrought out of the Earth by the assistance of Satan The other let down into the Earth by the Spirit of the Lord. The whole Earth is still taken up about Religion It is both natural and artificial and that about which the whole strength of Nature and Art is most employed There hath not been any part of the Earth so barbarous wherein there have not been some strains of devotion found There is every where where the nature of man appears where the art of man is exercised and where there is any breath either of God or Satan stiring some kind of seed and some kind of culture of Religion The main end of Religion in reference to us is Salvation Not only present relief and protection in our present feeble estate but Salvation in a future estate which the very nature of man pointeth him unto and teacheth him to look after We are at present involved in misery we feel it Every creature feeleth it according to its kind and we according to our kind There is some future estate of things unto which we all are passing And this present estate though it be wholy vain in reference to us as we now are yet it cannot be at all vain in reference to that but that which is perfect must of necessity order every thing perfectly to its end so that nothing be lost not any one motion of any creature in any kind Now this is most evident That though all men almost expect Salvation yet the attainment of it will be very rare The common paths of Heathenish Worship will not lead to it and in the midst of the Dispensations of God there are few who truly walk to it How few of the Jews under the Dispensation of the Law did truly walk towards Salvation And how many Disciples under the Gospel ran so as they could not obtain Many shall say Lord Lord open to us but the Lord shall answer them Verily I know you not They shall speak like persons well acquainted with the Lord and very sure of entrance but the Lord will disown them and tell them publiquely Of a truth I know you not Doth it not then behove every one to look about him It is very ill trifling about Eternity Thou wilt one day be ashamed O confident Soul who hast sought for the treasure in the wrong field who hast layd out thy mony for that which is not bread and thy pains for that which will not satisfie Wouldst thou but consider how unable thou art to justifie thy Religion now I speak to the most strict to the most exact persons living I say bring thy Religion to that touchstone which may now be held forth how wilt thou manifest it to thine own spirit to be weighty Thou knowest thou beleevest thou lovest thou obeyest Very good But how wilt thou justifie any of these I dare boldly affirm that unless thou hast seen the stamp of God with the eye of a true understanding 1 Joh. 5.20 thou canst not be able to say that these are of his stamp and unless they be of the stamp of God and have the very Nature and Life of God in them I am sure they shall not save thee Ah foolish man Because thou hast lighted upon the Scriptures and readest and hearest and prayest and conformest thy life as well as thou canst to the directions thereof yea prayest for the help of the Spirit acknowledging thine own weakness and unprofitableness c. dost thou think to be saved Dost thou not know that the root of all this is rejected by the Lord and can any of the fruit be accepted I can assure thee the spirit of man will do this and the spirit of man in thee may do this The Lord hath written this in the nature and present state of man and when he pleaseth he may draw it out And seeing with God it is all one to will as to do the spirit of man which is universally willing unto this shall be as well accepted herein as thine He who would have been wrought upon to do this is as justifiable before God as thou who hast been wrought upon and hast done it And thou who art uncircumcised in heart for that which thou callest the circumcision is no more it then that which the Jews called so art as loathsom before God as those who are uncircumcised in their outward practises and professions Let me plead a little further with thee Dost thou know what the spirit of man can do when his whole nature when all his understanding his affections and passions are purified and heightened It is a dull frothy stupified spirit which can please it self in this drossy world a spirit a little sublimated a little enlightened a little quickened cannot but mind things of another nature even such as are suitable to its inward part and the future estate thereof And what

they were in Christ and had the eternal life of God and Christ in them They knew that they were of God and that the Son of God was come who gave them an understanding to know him that is true and that they were in him that is true in his Son Jesus Christ And this was no high-flown fancy concerning God and eternal life which consists only in the elevation of the imagination but the truth This is the true God and eternal life 1 Joh. 5.19 20. What shall we say then to these things Is it not time for us to make a stand and look about us Is it not time for us to miss the Lord and seek to begin with him Man is naturally confident and yet commonly deceived in the ground-work of his confidence From our first springing up in Popery unto all our rents and divisions thence both in Doctrine and Worship we have still been confident that we have always been in the right How vain is man In every change he confesseth himself wrong and yet that still to which he changeth must needs be right Ah wretched man There is a lye in thy heart which springs up in all thy thoughts and ways of devotion and until thou beest new formed thou wilt not be capable of entertaining the truth but only of deluding thy self What should I advise thee what can be proper for thee but to examine the true ground and joyn with the house of Israel lamenting after the Lord to bewail the loss of his light his life his guidance his presence The cause of joy is not the cause of grief only is and is in abundance and where it is manifested with demonstration and power there will not need any exhortation to it I must profess I would rather chuse tears although I were sure they should never be wiped away from mine eyes after substance after that which my spirit wants and can alone take up with then the greatest mirth or pleasure which vanity for such I account all the Religion of man with all that springs from it can afford Rejoyce in the Lord always They might well rejoyce always in the Lord who enjoyed the Lord who had a kind of constant presence of the Bridegroom in their spirits Their Lord lived in them walked with them and kept them company by his Spirit But is this spoken to us who are Orphans Though the spirit of man in his several ways of Religion is not an Orphan therefore he may rejoyce also The same Spirit of the Lord which piped unto the Apostles and primitive Christians administring unto them occasion of dancing mourneth unto us and our proper way of answering it is in lamentation Lament therefore after the Lord and mourn over Jerusalem Mourn over the ruines and desolations of Jerusalem Pity the dust of Sion Jerusalem hath been layd waste Sion lieth in the dust nay Sion is it self burnt into dust by the extream jealousie and fury of the Eternal who hath let out his flames more fiercely upon her then upon any abomination to be found among men Jerusalem hath drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury yea it hath drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling and wrung them out Isai 52.17 Yet she is still Jerusalem she is still Sion and her very dust is lovely The Lord knoweth her and loveth her dust and it is impossible for any to discover her native worth and beauty and not to pity and mourn over her present condition What is this the Lords darling is this the only beauty will scoffing earth say Ishmael cannot but despise Isaac though growing though thriving though owned by the Lord how contemptible then must he needs be in his death and burial The world wanting the inward eye wonders to hear God speak such great things of his people of the abundantly rich glory and excellency of their life they appear so mean to them at the best They never have the loveliness of man in them how loathsom then must they needs be when all that which is their own beauty is broken down in them when the remainders of their earthly beauty with the whole frame of their spiritual beauty is dashed in peeces like a potters vessel and burnt up together Yet how precious is the seed of God under all these how amiable is this very dust of Sion The very brokenness sickness misery of this estate is of more true value then all the soundness then all the health of life and Salvation that is any where else to be found throughout the whole Earth Yet this object is very lamentable and it would grieve any ones heart to behold it He who hath seen known tasted or had the least glimpse of Sion in her glory O how would his heart throb at the view of her here yet here if not here alone is she to be found Is it nothing to thee O thou Preserver of man that the foundations of thine own holy Habitation are thus shaken Where is thy Zeal where is the sounding of thy Bowels at the death and misery of thine own seed O Lord wilt thou also bring forth children to the Murtherer Awake O Lord Rouze up thy self Let thine own everlasting Spirit stir in the motions of its own life and never leave till it hath raised up disconsolate Jerusalem desolate Jerusalem afflicted Jerusalem distracted Jerusalem Jerusalem which is sunk dead and rotten Jerusalem which is not and hath made it the praise of the whole Earth AMEN FINIS