Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	age_n	year_n	young_a	352	4	5.7811	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49697	Christ crucified, or, The doctrine of the Gospel asserted against Pelagian and Socinian errours revived under the notion of new lights : wherein also the original, occasion and progress of errours are set down : and admonitions directed both to them that stand fast in the faith and to those that are fallen from it : unto which are added three sermons ... / by Paul Lathom.	Lathom, Paul.	1666 (1666)	Wing L572; ESTC R25131	132,640	284

any of us into the way of falling and therefore let us not be secure nor lean to our own understandings Prov. 3.5 but trust to the strength of the Lord who alone is able to hold us up 2 This should teach us charity toward many seduced persons There are Seducers and Seduced amongst the Sectaries The Seducers are abominable and to be prayed against The Seduced are to be pittied and prayed for Our Church teacheth us very piously and charitably to pray that God would please to bring into the way of Truth all such as have erred and are deceived And also that he would strengthen such as do stand and finally beat down Satan under our feet And this is a prayer which we had need daily and devoutly to put up seeing even those that are truly gracious may fall into some Errors And they are in this danger especially at some times which leads me to the III. Part of the Text viz. 3 Part. The condition which these Christians had formerly been in which had laid them open to the danger of being seduced and that is set down in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 children When I was a child saith the Apostle I spake as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child 1 Cor. 13.10 But when I became a man I put away childish things Pueri mobiles sunt sine judicio c. saith Mesander in locum Children are fickle and without judgment and therefore do easily assent to any Doctrine And Calvin Pueri sunt qui nondum gressum firmârunt in viâ Domini c. They are called Children who have not setled their feet in the way of the Lord who are not fully resolved which way to take but fluctuate inclining now this way now that way But those that are setled in Christianity though they be not arrived to full perfection yet they have so much constancy as to be setled in the Faith A Child you know will easily be induced to believe any thing upon slight grounds will presently be enflamed with an eager love to any novel vanity will easily be perswaded to follow a stranger or to part with any thing it hath because it knows not the value of it So those that are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 children in Christianity are easily induced to believe the fair and specious pretences of seducing spirits to delight in novel Opinions and modes in Religion 2 Pet. 1.1 to follow false Teachers and to depart from that precious Faith into which they were Baptized And as there are three things in Children which makes them prone to mistakes so also in them that are Children in knowledge 1. Want of Consideration They do not take the pains to weigh what they hear but presently entertain and are fond of it whereas Elder persons are more staid and deliberate and have through use obtained a faculty to see further into a thing then those that are younger And while men are Children in Christianity they are apt rashly and inconsiderately to fall out with the Truth and to embrace novelties whereas due consideration would prevent this 2. Want of Experience Experience is the Mother of Prudence for want of this Children are so easily overseen And those people that are not versed in the History of the Church to observe the rising and falling of these Errors in former Ages that have not experience of the subtilty and wickedness of seducing spirits may easily be ensnared by their fair pretences 3. Self-confidence Young persons are prone to conceit themselves to know more then their Elders and this confidence doth commonly overthrow them while it withholds them from hearkning to the advice which elder years might administer And the Apostle tells us 1 Tim. 3.6 that Novices in the Faith are very apt to be pufft up with pride and thereby to fall into the snare of the Devil It will greatly concern us therefore 1 Cor. 14.13 to take the Apostles Exhortation Brethren be not children in understanding In malice be ye children but in understanding be ye men For to be children in Knowledge will expose us to that great mischief which I am now coming to speak of in the IV. 4 Part. Part of the Text viz. The prejudice that the Apostle tells them they had been apt to receive while they were children in the Faith And this he sets forth by Two very remakable Expressions The first is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tossed to and fro like waves of the Sea Another Apostle calls the Seducers Jude 13. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 raging Waves of the Sea both in regard of the boistrousness of their motion and that trouble and prejudice that they give to those that pass through them And here this Apostle sets forth the condition of those that are seduced by this term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tossed to and fro as a Ship amidst the Waves of the Sea Eleganter miseram eorum trepidationem exprimit c. saith Calvin in locum He very elegantly sets forth the uncertain and wavering condition of seduced people by this Metaphor of a Ship at Sea in a tempestuous time For as such a Ship is tossed by the merciless Wind and Waves so that neither the counsel nor strength of the Pilot or Marriners can guide it Even such is the condition of them that are tossed by the winds of strange Doctrin All the counsel and advice of Friends and Teachers yea all the strength of good Laws and Government cannot prevail to steer them in a right course but the unruly winds of false Doctrin and false Teachers like raging waves of the Sea do hurry them up and down at their pleasures and to their extreme hazzard all this while As a Ship in a tempestuous Sea is in great danger of shipwrack and it is very doubtful whether ever it will safely arrive at its desired haven So these seduced persons are in a very great and apparent danger of their souls though the almighty power of God be able to rescue them as a Lamb out of the mouth of a Lion yet I say for the present they are in a condition of very great hazzard The second word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 carried about Comparat eos vel stipulis vel aliis rebus infirmis c. saith Calv. in loc As twigs are bended every way with the wind and chaff and straw and such like matter that is light and lies loose are easily driven to and fro with it Even so persons that are but as weak twigs will bow and bend to a compliance with every strange Opinion when strong Trees that are well rooted in the Faith will sooner break then bend Those that lie loose and unsetled and withal are of a light and less solid temper are blown up and down like chaff while those that are weighty and good Corn lie still in the floor How greatly therefore will it concern us all to endeavour to be

when the Prophet speaks of the calves of our lips Hos 14.3 we must needs qualifie it by rendring it the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving which proceeding from thankful lips and hearts is more acceptable to God then the offering of Calves or Lambs was under the old Law So when the Scripture applies to God hands and feet and mouth and eyes c. we must not with the Anthropomorphitae entertain such gross and absurd conceits of God as to think him to be a body and endued with such parts of a body as be in us but we must understand those expressions to set forth unto us such works of God in the World as some-what resemble these actions of ours in which we use those members of our bodies as Instruments So when the Apostle saith Christ sent him not to baptize 1 Cor. 1.17 but to preach the Gospel for as much as in the former verses the Apostle expresly tells us that he had Baptised some which he could not have done without a commission we must therefore understand it that Christ sent him not so much to Baptize as to Preach even as the same negative particle in other places Mat. 9.13 doth not deny absolutely but comparatively as in that Text I will have mercy and not sacrifice So when the Papists pertinaciously urge the letter of those words Mat. 26.16 This is my Body to prove the Body of Christ to be present in their sense in the Eucharist we say That forasmuch as this is both contrary to what our senses witness and is a contradiction to reason and also destroys the very nature and end of a Sacrament that therefore it is a great injury to the Text to adhere so pertinaciously to the letter of it and not to qualifie it with a milder and more intelligible construction This then is one extream in which many run on to the wronging of the Scripture and of their own judgements when they are over-severe in adhering to the letter And indeed such a pertinaciousness as it sometimes argues men to be guilty of a fond ignorance so for the most part it smells of a design for I have still observed that they who would be over-strict in sticking to the letter of a Text when they have conceived it meet to serve their own turn would be forward enough to run off from the letter when another interpretation would suit better with their purpose And therefore it argues that they are not onely deceived themselves but have a design to deceive others also But there are others who run in another extream which is equally dangerous viz. those that without necessity do fly to a spiritual or mystical sense so as quite to reject the literal and this as it doth commonly proceed from affectation and a desire to seem to take notice of som●thing more than vulgar eyes are aware of so it is for the most part used to serve a design to evade the force of some plain convincing Scripture by mudding the water that so themselves and their tenets may escape unseen Did it not smell of a design in those female teachers who when that Text was alledged against their usurping of this office 1 Tim. 2.11 I suffer not a woman to teach would seek to evade it by giving a mystical interpretation thereof as if by woman should be understood the flesh by which the Apostle will not have us to be taught But so it is that too many do not search the Scriptures to the end that they may conform their own opinions and practices to this Rule but that they may warp the Rule as far as possible to a compliance with the irregularity of their own thoughts and actions Indeed it hath always been the practice of the godly Divines and Fathers of the Church to endeavour to raise up their own and their Readers Meditations to high and spiritual things upon occasion of some historical passage in the Scriptures and there is no doubt but we may very profitably tread the same steps but yet we had need to take heed that we be not tempted to follow these Meditations or divine Fancies so far that they draw us to an utter leaving and forgetting of the literal sense of a Text. Origen of old was accused as faulty in this point And no doubt but his too much admiring that Platonism in the Study whereof he spent his younger years and together with that his over much affecting to soar high in a mystical interpretation of Scripture did if not draw him to over-reach in many things yet induce them that have read his Works either to draw erronious conclusions from them which hath been the unhappiness of some or else to condemn his writings as erronious as did the second Council held at Constantinople Prid. Synop. Concil An. Dom. 532. And it is great pitty that some amongst the Learned and Eloquent persons of our age who are great admirers of that Platonick Philosophy in which Origen was trained up in his youth and Favourers of those notions of his which the Church hath condemned as errours have bestowed those choise parts which might have done God and his Church great service if they had been otherwise imployed to invent Cabalistical interpretations of some pieces of Scripture which the Chuch hath in all ages received in the literal sense Me-thinks this danger might easily be discerned to attend upon such attempts that if we once admit a Cabala to interpret the beginning of the History of the World I mean the three first Chapters of Genesis we cannot imagine what should hinder the same spirit from passing the like construction upon the History of the Gospel and so in a while such projectors may either begin themselves or at least induce their injudicious Readers to doubt not onely whether there was any such thing in reality as the Fall of a Protoplast and of us all in him but whether there were any such things done in reality as those transactions which the Gospel relates in order to the reconciling of God and Man I could wish those that make this great stir for reducing our Religion and holy Scriptures to a compliance with Platonism would receive a check by that Grave caution of a late Pious and Learned Bishop Bp. Prid. Fa. controv Caveant ne dum Platonem faciunt Christianum seipsos ostendant esse minime Christianos While men attempt to mix Christianity and Platonism together instead of mending what they conceive to be a miss they may be in great danger both to pervert their own judgements and to mud the streams of Doctrine to the great prejudice of those that shall drink of them They seem already to soar aloft above the simplicity of the Gospel I wish they may be sensible of it before they meet with the success of Icarus And that they may in time employ themselves in the defence of the ancient Christian Faith and beating down of Atheism rather then to