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	son_n	zion_n	27	3	9.0179	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54843	The law and equity of the gospel, or, The goodness of our Lord as a legislator delivered first from the pulpit in two plain sermons, and now repeated from the press with others tending to the same end ... by Thomas Pierce ...	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1686 (1686)	Wing P2185; ESTC R38205	304,742	736

Mouths to confess him our Heads to believe him our Hands and Feet to serve him our Wills to be ruled and our Wits to be captivated by him our Hearts to love him and our Lives to dye for him All which though it is All is still too little if we impartially consider the Disproportion of our Reward that blessed Parallel drawn out for us by God's own Compass Life and Aeternity A man you know would do any thing whereby to find Life though in our Saviour's Oxymôron it is by losing it Matth. 10. 39. And as a man will part with any thing to save his life so with life too to eternize it If therefore our Saviour does bid us follow him let us not venture to choose our way And if we can but arrive at Heaven it matters not much though we go by Hell For comparing his Goodness with his Mastership his Promises with his Precepts and the Scantling of our Obedience with the Immenfity of our Reward we shall find that our work hath no proportion with our wages but that we may inquire when all is done Good Master what shall we do And this does prompt me to proceed to my last Doctrinal Proposition That when all is done that can be we are unprofitable Servants Our Obedience is not the Cause but the meer Condition of our Reward And we arrive at Eternal Life not by way of Purchase as we are Servants but of Inheritance as we are Sons It is not here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to deserve but to inherit Eternal Life As Christianity like Manhood hath its several steps and degrees of growth so the Soul as well as the Body doth stand in need of Food and Raiment And agreable to the Complexion of immaterial Beings she is not only bedeck't but sustain'd with Righteousness Now as none can inherit Eternal Life but He that is born of the Spirit And as he that is born of the Spirit must also be nourished with the Spirit before he can possibly live an holy and spiritual Life so it is only God the Spirit that gives us Birth God the Son that gives us Breeding and God the Father that gives us the privilege of Adoption The Spirit feedeth us as his Babes the Son instructs us as his Disciples the Father indows us as his Heirs It is the Spirit that fits us for our Inheritance the Son that gives us a Title to it And 't is especially the Father who doth invest us with the Possession But now of all God's External and Temporal Blessings which have any Resemblance unto his Spiritual methinks the Manna that fell from Heaven is the liveliest Embleme of his Grace Of which though some did gather more and some less yet they that gather'd most had nothing over and they that gather'd least had no lack Thus as Manna like Grace is the Bread of Heaven so Grace like Manna is also measur'd out by Omers For even they that have least of the Grace of God have enough if well us'd to inherit Heaven and even they that have most have not enough to deserve it But still the Parallel goes on For the reason why the Manna which God sent down to the People Israel would not indure above a Day was saith Philo upon the Place lest considering the Care by which their Manna was preserv'd more than the Bounty by which 't was given they might be tempted to applaud not God's Providence but their own Thus if God had bestow'd so full a measure of his Grace as to have left us altogether without our Frailties perhaps our very Innocence might have been our Temptation We might have found it an Inconvenience to have been dangerously Good Like those once happy but ever-since unhappy Angels whose very excellency of Nature did prove a kind of Snare to them even the purity of their Essence did give occasion to their defilement Their very Height and Eminence was that that helpt to pull them down and one reason of their falling was that they stood so firmly For though they were free from that Lust which is the Pollution of the Flesh yet they were lyable to Ambition which is the Filthiness of the Spirit As if their Plethory of Goodness had made them Wantons or the Unweildiness of their Glory had made them Proud 't was from a likeness to their Creator that they aspir'd to an Equality and so they were the first of all the Creatures as well in their Fall as their Perfections Now adding to this the consideration that Ingratitude does gather Increase of Guilt from a greater abundance of Obligations so as the Angels falling from Heaven could not fall less than as low as Hell we may perhaps find a reason for which to congratulate to our selves that Dimensum or Pittance of God's free Grace which hath left us our Infirmities as fit Remembrancers to Humility That being placed in a condition rather of Trembling than of Security every Instance of our defect may send us to God for a Supply God hath given us our Proportion that we may not grumble or despair but not such a Perfection as once to Adam and the Angels before their Fall that we may not like Them be either careless or presume So that making a due comparison of that faint measure of Goodness which now we possibly may have by the Grace of God with that full measure of Glory which now at least we hope for we must be fain to acknowledge when all is done that the greatest measure of our obedience is far from deserving the least of Bliss For as the Sun appears to us a most glorious Body and yet is look't upon by God as a spot of Ink so though the Righteousness of men doth seem to men to be truly such yet compar'd with our Reward it is no more than as filthy Rags That other promise of our Lord Never to see or to taste of Death had been sufficiently above our merits But to inherit Eternal Life too though I cannot affirm it above our wishes yet sure it is often above our Faith Had we no more than we deserv'd we should not have so great Blessings as Rain and Sunshine and God had still been Iust to us had he made our best wages to be as negative as our work For as the best of us all can boast no more than of being less guilty than other men so we can claim no other Reward than to be somewat less punish't that is to be beaten with fewer stripes As the Ox amongst the Iews being unmuzzl'd upon the Mowe by the special appointment of God himself at once did eat and tread the Corn whereby he received his Reward at the very same Instant in which he earn'd it so the Protection of such a Soveraign is Reward enough for our Allegiance and the present Maintenance of a Servant is the usual Recompence of his labour Whatsoever God

under a Necessity of taking pains Conceiving it infinitely difficult for any man to live a strict and a vertuous life who is not bless'd with some Calling wherein to labour Ask't he was indeed by Xenophon and other Friends why of so many great Offers he would not accept at least of some if not in his own yet in his Childrens consideration But still He answer'd If they live as they ought they cannot want Blessings and if they live otherwise I cannot wish that they may have them If they are dutiful to their God they will find him an indulgent and loving Father And if they rebel against their Maker what have I to do with them Now consider how these Heathens who liv'd before Christ had more of Christian Self-denyal than most of Them that come after They were many of them plac'd upon exceeding high Mountains shew'd the Kingdoms of the Earth and the glory of them Yea though they were proffer'd those Injoyments and strongly tempted to accept them yet so great was their courage they did not yield Men who if they are not fit for our imitation are fit to shame us at least for our imitating no more of the Life of Christ. Who as it were in opposition to this Temptation of the Devil drawn from the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them made choice of Poverty and Despisedness for his external Qualifications For though by reason of his Divinity he could not possibly be obnoxious to the unworthiness of Sin yet by reason of his Humanity he was capable of suffering the most unworthy Solicitations And even those Solicitations disturb'd his Ease although they had not the power to hurt his Safety Something therefore there was in it for our Edification That when it pleased the God of Heaven to take upon him our Nature who had it in his own choice both of whom he would be born and in what Quality he would live He did not choose the greatest but rather the meanest and the most abject of all Conditions Now whoever he is that chooseth be he wise or foolish ever chooseth what is Best either really or in shew either best in it self or best to his imagina tion From whence it follows that our Saviour being the Wisdom of the Father as God the Son could not choose but choose wisely and what was really the best when he made choice to be so meanly both born and bred As for his Birth sure a Carpenter's Spouse was a very mean Parent The Stable of an Inn was an exceeding mean Place wherein an Oxe and an Ass were as mean Attendants And then for his Breeding It was in Galilee yea in Nazareth the meanest part of all Palestine In the House of Goodman Ioseph one of the meanest men of Nazareth And in the way of a Carpenter as mean a Trade as could well be chosen Our Saviour shall not choose for us if he chooses no better for Himself will the men of this World be apt to say We would choose had we our choice to be born of Princes to be bred in stately Palaces and brought up at Court None should be greater if we could help it nor any richer than our selves We would choose the very Things wherewith the Devil here tempted Christ All the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them Would not be so poorly spirited as to refuse a frank offer for want of a little Complaisance an act of Worship and Veneration A Beast indeed will rest contented when his Belly is full and looks no higher when he is Empty than to That which grows up from the Ground he treads on But Man is made of another Metal and He is scarce fit to live who has no Ambition but sits him down like a Beast completely satisfied with a sufficience Conscience and Contentment are fit for persecuted Churchmen or well-bred Quakers or else for men whose Wits are lost in their Studies and whose overmuch Learning has made them as mad as any Paul a Man who talks of Contentment in All Conditions and would have us look no farther as to the Goods of this World than Food and Rayment Is it not Pity that such as These should be the Reasonings of the Followers and Friends of Christ who followed the things which They eschew and eschewed those things which They contend for His choice I say was to be poorer and more despised than other men And because being a Man he was to be of some Calling he pitch'd on That that was lyable to least Temptations and so was registred at Nazareth not in the Quality of a Freeholder but of an Handicraft-Man He was but Faber Lignarius a Wooden Smith Had he been a Freeholder he had had though not a Kingdom yet a small Pittance of this World He might have trod his own Ground and have breath'd his own Air and have eaten his own Bread without depending upon the Charity of any other man's hands or on the Labour of his own But he was on the contrary so poor and destitute that he had neither Food nor Rayment but what he earn'd or had given him or got by Miracle As long as from his Twelfth to his Thirtieth year of Age diverse Fathers are of opinion that he wrought for his Living in his Father in Law 's Shop Nor is there any Church-Writer who gives another Accompt of him And from thence until his Death he obtain'd his Bread either by Teaching as a Prophet or doing good as a Physician Both gratuitously and freely although by some he was rewarded Now that our Saviour's way of choosing may have some Influence upon ours and this our second Consideration may be as useful as it is long § 18. Let us consider in the Third place how God and Satan are two Competitors for our choice Satan tempts us to joyn with Him in his Attempts against God God solicits us on the contrary to side with Him against Satan Satan tempts us to Rebellion with the Things that are seen which are but Temporal God solicits us to Obedience with the Things that are not seen which are Eternal Satan's Proposals are to the Flesh God's especially to the Spirit Satan takes us up to an exceeding high Mountain and discovers to us from thence all the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them God on the other side takes us up to Mount Sion or at least takes us down to the Valley of Achor and discovers to us from thence the Kingdom of Heaven and Glory of it and saith to us in effect as the Devil to Christ All This will I give you if falling down ye will worship me Now it remains that we consider to which Proposal of the two our Affections and Appetites have the most reason to incline Let 's put them Both into the Scales and then choose That that shall weigh the heaviest As for the Things of this present World the best we can say of them is This They all