Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	anoint_v	bind_v	zion_n	23	3	8.6637	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70493	A vindication of the primitive Christians in point of obedience to their Prince against the calumnies of a book intituled, The life of Julian, written by Ecebolius the Sophist as also the doctrine of passive obedience cleared in defence of Dr. Hicks : together with an appendix : being a more full and distinct answer to Mr. Tho. Hunt's preface and postscript : unto all which is added The life of Julian, enlarg'd.	Long, Thomas, 1621-1707.; Ecebolius, the Sophist. Life of Julian.	1683 (1683)	Wing L2985; ESTC R3711	180,508	416

valiant Christians the tenth man of whom when Maximian had caused to be executed for refusing to slay their Fellow-Christians and to offer Sacrifice to his false Gods Mauritius taking the rest of the Legion aside used this Oration unto them as Eucherius Archbishop of Lions relateth in the Acts of their Martyrdom I congratulate your Vertue most worthy Fellow-Souldiers that for the love of Religion the Command of Caesar wrought no fear at all in you You have seen your Fellow-Souldiers in a manner with rejoycing minds to have been delivered up to a glorious death How did I fear lest any of you as it was easie for armed men to do under pretence of Defence should by lifting up his hands give interruption to their most blessed Funerals I had now readie at hand for the forbidding this attempt the Example of our Christ who by the Command of his own mouth Put up thy Sword which was unsheathed by his Apostle teaching thereby that the Vertue of Christian-Confidence is greater than all Weapons here Christ our God did clearly Prohibit our minds and hands that none with mortal hands should resist the Divine Work but rather with ever-continued Religion add a consummation to the work begun Hitherto we have read examples inserted into the Holy Scriptures but even now we our selves have beheld whom we ought to imitate After this Maximian having commanded a second decimation of those that remained among which it is likely that Mauritius suffer'd Exuperius taking the Ensigns of his Legion spake thus My most worthy Fellow-Souldiers I hold as you see the Ensigns of a secular warfare but to those Arms I provoke you not I excite not your Courage and Valour to such wars as these another kind of fight is to be chosen by us It is not by these Swords that you can make your way to the Kingdom of Heaven And then wisheth this Message might be returned to the persecuting Emperour We are thy Souldiers indeed but withal Gods Servants to thee we owe our imployment in the War to him our Innocence from thee have we received the reward of our labour to him we are beholding for the beginning of our life we cannot so follow thee in this though our Prince as to deny God who is our Maker and whether thou wilt or wilt not is thine also As for us even this necessitie of our Life doth not drive us to Rebellion Despair it self which most strengthneth men in dangers hath not been able to arm us against thee Behold we have our Weapons and yet resist not as willing rather to die than overcome and chusing rather to perish innocent than live Traitors If to what thou hast already decreed against us thou wilt add more be it Fire Torture or Sword we are ready for it WE ARE CHRISTIANS and such as our selves we cannot persecute Consider O Caesar the courage of this Legion our Weapons we cast away and thy Executioner shall find our hands unarmed but our breasts armed with the Catholick Faith Kill us down with us without all fear we offer our Necks to be cut off by the Swords appointed to slay us And so they were all cut in pieces and each of them were more than Conquerours obtaining a Crown and Kingdom infinitely more glorious than that of the Roman Empire Now suppose some Dissenting Apostate Chaplain of that noble Army that had rather lose his Religion than his Life and had more hopes to divide the spoils of a Temporal Crown than to trust his Saviour for an entire Eternal one had held forth to them after this manner My dearly beloved Brethren fellow-Souldiers and fellow-Saints we have hitherto hazzarded our Lives under a Pagan and Tyrannical Prince who hath employed us as a Forlorn Hope on all desperate designs purposely to destroy us and though he be drunk with the bloud of our Brethren now spilt before our Eyes yet doth he thirst after ours also having appointed us as so many Sheep for the Slaughter Hearken my beloved the Kings of the Earth ever were and ever will be Enemies to the King of Heaven It is not I but the Spirit of God by David tells you The Kings of the Earth set themselves and the Rulers take Counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed but the same Spirit tells us that notwithstanding he hath set his King upon the holy hill of Sion who shall break the Kings of the Earth with a Rod of Iron and dash them in pieces like a Potters Vessel and his Saints shall have the honour of binding their Kings in Chains and their Nobles with Fetters of Iron Moreover Brethren we read how in old time for the sake of his Elect God reproved Kings saying Touch not mine Anointed and do my Prophets no harm It is true that God hath appointed Government as his Ordinance but he hath not tied us up to Monarchie which all the Wise men of Greece have rejected and called them all by the name they deserved Tyrants And though our Emperours came in upon us by Conquest and Surprize yet we have been governed heretofore by a Senate and sometime the Senate and sometime the Souldiery have cut off their Emperours for their Arbitrary Government and set up others in the room So that if we grant the Office to be from God yet the person appointed to that Office is a Creature of man or a Humane Creature and they that set them up may pull them down for they are appointed to be a terrour to evil-doers and to be the Ministers of God to us for our good But when he is a Murtherer of them that do well as we see by this bloudy Execution on our Fellow-Souldiers he is the Devils Minister not Gods and in resisting we fight not against him but the Devil that is in him Besides that which this Tyrant intends is such an arbitrary Act of his own that the great Senate whose Counsel and Authority he hath rejected are afraid of the like cruelty and would be glad to be restored to their Authoritie Let us therefore be no longer Servants of such men but stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free Hath not he made us his First-born higher than the Kings of the Earth Are not we a Royal Priesthood and have not the Saints a promise that they shall inherit the Earth The Gentiles may permit Kings to exercise Lordship over them but it ought not to be so with us 'T is in vain to expect till the Emperours become Christians we Christians must make our selves Emperours at least we may divide the Empire among us and set up Christ alone to rule as King in the midst of us in a HOLY COMMON-WEALTH And now is the time or never If we should tamely submit to the Tyrants Sword our Religion which is bound up in our Lives will perish with us and the Generations yet unborn will curse us Did not Moses slay the Egyptian that assaulted his Brother and were not the