Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	adoption_n	cry_v	father_n	9,732	5	5.0154	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33231	Animadversions upon a book intituled, Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church, by Dr. Stillingfleet, and the imputation refuted and retorted by S.C. by a person of honour.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.; Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699. Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church.	1673 (1673)	Wing C4414; ESTC R19554	113,565	270

offence in Dr. Stillingfleet to express no more reverence towards them Concerning the person of S. Benedict I do not find that the Doctor in any place calls him an Hypocrite or a counter feit Enthusiast he may have been deluded by the effects of a distempered faney as many well-meaning men have been and in truth I think Mr. Cressy is less tender of his honour than he ought to be by challenging all men to discover any thing in or of S. Benedict that may abate that reverence to his memory that he is bound to pay him and none disturb him in it except they be haled by him to rake into his ashes which whosoever shall do cannot but find enough that will lessen the esteem men would be willing to have of him If Saint Bennet's rules contain nothing but a collection skilfully made of all Evangelical precepts and Councils of perfection If there the Ecclesiastical office is so wisely ordered that the whole Church judged it fit to be her pattern of which I never heard before If S. Bennet teaches his Disciples to begin all their actions with an eye to God begging his assistance and referring them intirely to God's glory If there be nothing in his Rules but what is mentioned by Mr. Cressy though there doth not appear all things necessary in it for a great and a wise King to make choice of for his rule in managing his Kingdom nor doth he tell us who that wise King was S. Bennet may have been and Mr. Cressy might have continued a Protestant all those ends if there be no other in S. Bennet's Rules being as much commended and enjoyned by the Church of England as they are by any thing prescribed in the other Injunctions and if humility and peaceful obedience are indeed so copiously and vehemently inforced as if in them the spirit of his rule did principally consist he must not take it ill if he be thought not to have studied or conformed himself to that Rule when he presumes to call a great King a Tyrant a King that was Soveraign over all his Ancestors and lived and died as much a Catholick and as much an enemy to all Protestants as Mr. Cressy himself is at present and how he comes to have authority from the practice of his humility and peaceful obedience to stile such a Prince a Tyrant because he would not permit another Prince to be a Tyrant in his Dominions and over his subjects cannot be easily understood except it be to insinuate to all other Princes what he thinks of them and what he thinks he speaks when they shall deny obedience to the Pope which the most Catholick Kings frequently have done upon several occasions in the most Catholick times In the mean time if he well consider it he must believe that that single appellation of Tyrant setting aside the distance of the Persons is an expression more indecent more rude and in all respects more reproachful and scandalous than all the terms put together in Dr. Stillingfleet's Book can amount unto and to which he takes so great exception But I cannot enough wonder after all this at the meekness of Mr. Cressy's spirit in which he is willing even to appeal to the Doctors own judgment if he will but vouchsafe to read and examine the rules of S. Benedict which it is not possible for him to do without reading the second Chapter in which he describes the duty of an Abbot who he says ought to be the more careful of his behaviour Christi enim agere vices in Monasterio creditur quando ipsius vocatur praenomine for he proves that our Saviour was an Abbot upon Earth by that of S. Paul Accepistis spiritum adoptionis filiorum in quo clamamus Abba Pater We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but we have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father by which Text S. Bennet thought it was sufficiently proved that Christ was an Abbot Is the reading of this Rule now like to advance the honour of S. Benedict Or is it possible for any man who doth read it to believe the poor man how good soever his meaning might be qualified to give rules which can improve knowledge or devotion And in truth I think every man who reads the Orders which were at first instituted by S. Benedict and the other religious men named as every man may read them who desires it will find himself more in danger to be stirred to another passion than choler which is too predominant in the Doctor if he be provoked to it upon such an occasion at least that he will not find himself obliged to be of Bellarmine's opinion that those Orders were instituted by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and a man may honestly believe that there are not two men of that Society to which Bellarmine was a great honour who do concur with him in that opinion further than in what relates to S. Ignatius For my own part I have always had more kindness and esteem for the Monks of that Order I mean for those of the English Congregation and have had more conversation with them than with any other Religious of our Nation They are very few excepted all Gentlemen and of very good Families as Mr. Cressy is and of very civil and quiet natures not petulant and troublesome to those who do not think as they do and they were very kind to all their banished Country-men in France and Flanders for I have not known them in any other Provintes in the times of the late persecution I have been assured that they expressed more affection and duty to the King and were more useful to him even in assisting him with money in his greatest distresses and performing other offices for him than all the other Religious Communities put together And they had the good fortune to have opportunity to be instrumental towards his Majestie 's happy deliverance after the Battle at Worcester the consideration of all which hath prevailed with the King to give them more countenance and protection than he hath done to any other Ecclesiastical order and which on their part they have so well merited that I have not heard of one Benedictine Monk Mr. Cressy only excepted who hath imbarked himself in controversies in the present conjuncture to the disqueting of himself and others and in throwing reproaches upon the Church of England which may make men think that they do not live all by the same rule at least that they do not interpret it by the same spirit and yet after all this Testimony which is due to them from me I can by no means acknowledge or imagine why Mr. Cressy avows it That we owe to the followers and Disciples of S. Benedict the preservation of almost all the Literature which remains in the World which he says pag. 26. and which all the other Orders me-thinks which for the most part have been much more industrious in

instructors and he may be very confident if he finds neither of those that God hath not called him Sure Mr. Cressy cannot forget the names of very many persons it may be both men and women with whom and in whose conversation he had the honour and the happiness to spend many years of the most innocent part of his life from whose grave and learned information and excellent example he might have led a life more useful to God his Country and himself and in which he would have had less to answer to all three than that which he hath since by worse counsel and example given himself unhappily to And for Books I shall not supply his Catalogue with the names of many more of the same kind which he might as well have mentioned but I shall put him in mind of the excellent pious and devout Sermons which are constantly preached in that Church much better I believe than he hath heard in any other language and there was no restraint upon him but if he had liked other Books of devotion better he might have read the life of Mother Teresa that abounds in those visions he admires and that mystical Theology he delights in and even his own Sancta Sophia if any other man would have taken the pains to have put it together in that Colledge he was bred in with the same liberty he hath done either ever since sure good Books are not wanting in that climate For Miracles whereof he says we do not pretend to one not so much as the curing a Tertian Ague to testifie that our Reformation is pleasing to God I shall say no more than I have done We have not many to boast of and very good Catholicks think they boast of too many and would be glad to be without the mention of most of them and I do believe that very many pious men of his Church do believe that the restoration of the Church of England from that dust and ruines to which the barbarity impiety and sacriledge of the late rebellion had exposed it and in which the Roman Catholicks his Majesties own subjects more delighted and triumphed to see it almost buried than any other Catholicks did is a greater miracle of Gods mercy and power and if we make our selves worthy of it even a testimony of his being pleased with it then all those of which they brag so much are an evidence that he is pleased with what they do I have never had the luck to see his Church History which he is offended with the Doctor for stiling a great Legend which he knows is the stile given to those Collections in all Languages and he challenges the Doctor more scornfully to give to the world a pretty little legend of his reformed Saints The Doctor could very well have given him as large a list of as extraordinary persons of most profound learning and most exemplary lives of the Church of England since the Reformation as any other Christian Kingdom can supply him who it may lawfully be presumed since their deaths have enjoyed those sacred mansions of bliss which God hath prepared for those who please him but we are not ashamed that our Church is too modest to confer the sacred title of Saints which God hath reserved to his own only disposal for them to whom he had before assigned such a proportion of grace as is answerable to that high station and doth not receive the advice nor communicate the power in that particular of or to any person or jurisdiction upon Earth yet it shall be glad and doth pray that all such whom the Church of Rome hath presumed to call to that honour without any ambition or privity of their own may really enjoy the same And we do not in the least degree apprehend the displeasure of God Almighty upon our Church because it doth with all humility and after all possible endeavour to be capable of his favours leave the disposal of all the places and offices and imployments in his own house to his own gracious will and pleasure And though we do not pretend to know so much of their modern Saints as to think that they were of the same Religion with us Yet we do presume to say that the primitive Saints and Martyrs were all as much our Saints and Martyrs as theirs that is that we are as much of the same faith with those as they are We are as firm in the Apostles faith who were the first Saints and Martyrs of Christ as they can pretend to be We adhere as much to all the doctrine they taught and endeavour to practise all the duties which are enjoyned by them as sincerely and diligently as they do During the twelve persecutions which were the times when those prodigious Armies of Martyrs for their numbers were levied it may lawfully be presumed that very much the major part of them for those persecutions raged much more furiously in the East than in any part of Europe never heard of the Church of Rome none of them professed to have any opinion in which we differ from them The first and only subject of their Martyrdom was that they loudly avowed the birth passion and resurrection of our Saviour and their peremptory refusal to offer sacrifice to or to acknowledge the power of the Pagan Gods and the last would have excused them and preserved their lives whatsoever they had thought of the other so that there was no other point of controversie in issue but whether they were Christians and their marvellous and without doubt divine courage in affirming that and asserting that doctrine so soon after they were informed of it and before they were acquainted with any other operation of it than in their courage to lay down their lives for it was the whole ground and merit of their Martyrdom For according to the best evidence we have of those dark times and of that darker affair we may reasonably believe that many thousands of those blessed Martyrs lost their lives within a day an hour or less time according as the wild and brutish rage of the Iudge could find ways for their torture and execution after the moment of their conversion in which the spirit and zeal of the new Christians to die for their faith was little more stupendious than the implacable rage of their persecutors was in the vindication of the honour of their Pagan Gods for which the husband condemned his wife the father his son the brother his brother and all relations those who were nearest and dearest to them to the most exquisite torments that could be devised Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum How the Church of Rome comes to ingross all these Saints and Martyrs to themselves as their peculiar Patrons and Advocates an evidence cannot easily be comprehended except they conclude the because they have a power to make or to declare Saints they have likewise a power to appoint them what they shall do after they are Saints which