Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	angel_n	celestial_a	zion_n	54	3	8.3499	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33180	To Catholiko Stillingfleeton, or, An account given to a Catholick friend, of Dr. Stillingfleets late book against the Roman Church together with a short postil upon his text, in three letters / by I. V. C.	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1672 (1672)	Wing C433; ESTC R21623	122,544	282

graven things were made representations and similitudes both in Heaven and Earth notwithstanding the said law as the Serpent of brass which must either be made by melting or graving pomegranates lilies and various such-like things both graven in stone and interwoven in silks Cherubins or Angels in the Propitiatory even in Moses time and afterwards more fully and plentifully in Solomon's Temple it is not rationally to be doubted but that this law of his was intended only to keep those People close and constant to their own God and to their own Religion which was inconsistent with the idols of the Nations and not for any purpose of keeping Abraham Isaac and Jacob either out of their chamber hangings or ours I know the Jews do urge this Precept of Moses very eagerly against Christians ever since Jesus Christ our Lord was rejected by them whose image and figure they cannot abide to see But we must have patience with all men § 9. Moses saith he grounded this law of his upon a reason unchangable namely that Gods infinite and incomprehensible Deity cannot be represented O profound invention This is such a law and ground of a law as was never before thought of The ground and reason of making a law must be this an impossibility of breaking it They must not make any representations of God because God cannot be represented And the same motive or reason will be equally proper for all the rest of the Commandments They must keep the seventh day of the week a holy day The reason and motive because there is not an eighth day to keep holy and sanctifie They must honour their Parents The ground and reason of this because none of the whole Camp had any Fathers or Mothers alive to dishonour They must not kill The motive and reason is because they were all shot-free and so firmly inchanted that none could hurt them They must not commit adultery The ground and reason is because there was never a Woman in the Camp which any man though provok'd with the highest lust could possibly come near or touch with a pair of tongues They must not steal The great cause thereof is that there is nothing at all in the Camp for any man to take away Thus the Doctor imagines Moses to forbid any representations of God because God cannot be represented And such another discreet Mounsieur was he who solemnly commanded his Bowyer not to make him any shafts at all of a Piggs tail and he gravely gave him the reason for it because quoth he of a piggs tail no shaft can be made Truth is Moses never thought of any such Law nor any such reason of it much less but provided for the security of the Hebrews Religion that it might remain unchangable and firm in the mids of those many Nations round about them who worshiped false Gods and idols as Moses very frequently interprets himself and all the Prophets after him Therefore saith God by Moses thou shalt have no other Gods but me thou shalt not make to thy self any figures as the Gentiles do nor worship them For I am a jealous God and will have no intermingling of devillish idolatry with my service And all the reason given by Moses is gods jealousie not induring any divine worship but his own This is the very truth and all the truth of this business which this Doctor would turn another way thereby to make Moses seem as simple a man as himself And those idols forbidden by Moses did so involve an opposition to the true God and his divine worship that People could not possibly betake themselves to one but they must leave the other Therefore did Moses forbid both other Gods besides their own one God and all idols together which was by antient Christians very rationally and wisely reckoned all one and the same Commandement whereof no less a Man then St. Austin himself is witness But the memories of Abraham Isaac and Jacob could bring no such danger with them And that is our care for we are not in danger of loosing the faith of Jesus Christ by keeping the Image of him our crucified Lord among us or forsaking the communion of Saints by retaining their portraictures before our eyes We should ipso facto renounce our Lord and all his whole Religion should we set up Moses his forbidden Idols and make it our religion to worship them as heathens did But we are heartened incouraged and confirmed in our Christian Religion by looking on the faces of so many our glorious Martyrs holy Anchorets and Hermits pious Virgins and Confessors who profest this our Religion before us bravely triumphing by the power of Christs love and divine faith over sins allurements and deaths ugliest terrours though incompassed themselves with the like passions and infirmities we are our selves invironed round about And when we are entred into a Church amongst so many of our worthy Predecessors we compose our selves more heartily to our devotion then otherwise we should do in imitation of them remembring now that we are come up to Mount Sion to the City of our living God to celestial Jerusalem and society of Angels to the Church of Primitive Christians conscript in the Heavens to God the Judge of all to the Spirits of just men perfected to Jesus the Mediator of a new Testament and to the aspersion of blood speaking better things than Abel § 10. The Heathens saith he did ill in their idol worship and yet the wiser sort among them testifie that they did not hold them to be Gods but worshipped God in them Our acute divine having now by his fine wit so clarified Moses law that it might not so much concern Idolaters as our vulgar Painters he now begins so to purifie idolaters practice too that they may seem but in the same condition with our Catholick and best Christians And who would not give his penny to hear him act and speak The heathens all in general are so excused in their idolatry Aaron in his act of apostacy and Jeroboam in his great sin that they are all and each of them no otherwise faulty then the Church of Rome in his books Thus doth Mr. Stillingfleet convert idolatrous Nations while he sits dreaming in his Closet Here he diminishes and there he exaggerates here he blacks with his Pen and there he whitens and then he cries out all is one all of the same measure all of the same colour And truly I believe the great Gyant Goliah and little David might thus be made equal if the Gyant were beheaded and cut off by the knees on one side and David on the other side set upon a high pair of stilts While Catho●icks are made to do what they do not and Heathens not to do what they do on a supposal that all this is true there can be no great difference Let us then hear him what he tells us of Heathens in general The wiser sort among them testifie quoth he that they worshiped not

to Saints as Heathens to those dieties Two more falsities Papists do neither of these And the Doctor might be ashamed to talk thus Have not Protestants St. Pauls Church St Peters Church St. Dunstan St. Steven St. Johns Church and the like even as Catholicks have And did ever any Catholick in the world say or write or profess to offer Sacrifice to Saints They use a formal invocation of them One more Formal invocation is only an invocation of the cause who is to give the blessing grace or favour petitioned and from whom all good things do flow and not of him who requests it Popish Hymns and Anthems in honour of Saints are not only Rhetorical Apostrophees used by some of the Greek Fathers or poetical flourishes as those of Damascus Prudentius Paulinus Ambrosius or only general wishes that Saints would pray for us of which are some instances in good Authors or any devout Assemblies at the Monuments of Martyrs which were usual in antient times They are indeed not only this because they are also and principally formal invocations of the most glorious God as any one may perceive who will please to read over our Catholick Hymns for Apostles Martyrs Confessors Virgins in the Breviary as the Doctor more shame for him thus to talk hath done himself St. Austins example when he says Blessed St. Cyprian help us in our Prayers availes not Papists at all for that of St. Austin was but a p●ous Apostrophee It availes as much as we need call it Apostrophe or what you please Nor does it availe Papists that Faustus the Manichean Calumniates Catholicks living in St. Austins time with their honouring the memories and shrines of Martyrs and turning the old Idols into Martyrs which those Catholicks worshipped with like Vows for St. Austin's excuse of that fact does not agree with the Papists that are now adayes It so well agrees with them and justifies so punctually all that ever they do in this affair that they need not either to change or add one word to it I will only se● down that excuse of St. Austin as Mr. Still has been pleased here in his book to give it us without addition or change of any word All the worship saith St. Austin which we give to Saints is that of love and society which is the same kind with that we give to holy men of this life who are ready to suffer for truth of Gospel Sacrifice is not only refused to Saints and Angels but any other Religious honour which is due to God as the Angel forbad St. John to fall down and worship him The Heathens indeed built Temples erected Altars appointed Priests and offered Sacrifice to their Idols But we erect no Temples to Martyrs as to Gods but memories as to dead men whose Spirits live with God We raise no Altars on which to Sacrifice to our Martyrs but unto our one God only the God of Martyrs as well as ours at which They as men of God who have overcome the world by confessing him are named in their place and order but are not invocated by the P●iest who Sacrifices Whatever Christians do at the memories of Martyrs is for Ornament to those memories and not as any sacred rites and sacrifices belonging to the dead as Gods Nor do we worship our Martyrs with divine honours nor with the faults of men as the Gentiles did their Gods Thus speaks St. Austin to Faustus for the Catholicks then living as Dr. Still himself reports And the Catholicks now alive need no more to be said for them And thus his Idolatry Romance which fill up two of his Chapters is now happily ended And me-thinks Sir that he hath behaved himself herein somwhat like our Country Gypsies who meeting with people in the way under pretence of telling them their Fortunes ask them many odd uncouth Questions about things past not easily to be remembred and speak unintelligable ambiguous words which put them into so deep a muse that the Gypsies get thereby a fair opportunity to pick their pockets ΤΩ ΚΑΘΟΛΙΚΩ THe Doctor pretends Sir in his third Chapter to descend unto some parcels of our morality perswading us that five pieces of our belief and practice are main hindrances of a good life and devotion namely our Doctrine as he calls it of penance of purgatory of prayers in an unknown tongue of the efficacy of sacraments and of our prohibition of scripture His reasons for all this or his cunning leiger ways of perverting all these things his insincerity therein and notable dissimulation you shall hear by and by For perceiving now that after I have set down the sum of his text in gross I am forced to repeat it all again by retail spending thereby both time and paper needlesly I must content my self to give you his text onely in parts with my short comment adjoyned to each parcel as I go But give me leave to tell you Sir thus much in general aforehand that all this his whole Chapter is so palpably uncharitable and unjust that no honest understanding Reader what pleasure soever he took himself in writing it can read it over without disdain and grief What is this world come to and where are we and what strange things do we see and hear daily This one book of Dr. Still is to me such a world of wonders that I shall not hereafter ever marvel any more at any lie or slander that I shall know imposed by any whatever wicked man upon his neighbour Has the fool said in his heart there is no God no providence at all no care or respect to be used towards men Are all things lawful that any one shall lust to do or say against his neighbour no compassion no truth any more God help our innocent Catholicks And sure I am God will help them and justifie their cause in his own good time and preserve them always Hinderances of a good Life and Devotion § 1. Their Sacrament of Penance with contrition saith he is sufficient in the Church of Rome for Salvation without any more ado No mortyfying of passions no forsaking of sin is requisite who would not be of this fine easie way where all the precepts of holiness are insignificant But what one Catholick man upon the face of the earth ever thought or said this which he imposes here upon them all as their religion and faith Holy Gospel and all our spiritual books wherein our substantial religion is contained both those of antient times and of our later writers as Granada Thomas a Kempis S. Bonaventure Parsons Resolutions Bishop Sales Drexellius Stella and others do all of them press and urge this Catholick duty of interiour renovation sanctification and conformity to our Lord Jesus as the main end of his appearance amongst men And Catholicks themselves know that it is their onely care and fear their desire and study so to do such men to live and such to die as our Lord would have us For this