Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	apostle_n	church_n	holy_a	6,886	5	5.0568	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43698	A sermon preached before the Right Honourable George Earl of Berkeley, Governour, and the Company of Merchants of England trading into the Levant Seas at St. Peters Church in Broadstreet, January, 25, 1680 / by Charles Hickman ...	Hickman, Charles, 1648-1713.; Berkeley, George Berkeley, Earl of, 1628-1698.	1681 (1681)	Wing H1896; ESTC R11269	15,523	36

inflamed to hand up our Petitions to the Throne of Grace so spiritual and refined that they may convey our Prayers to Heaven so powerful and strong as to bring down Heaven to us And this is not to be done by painful noise and exercise of the Body but by the quick and sprightly motions of the soul These are the faculties which we must employ in the service of God and thus we must worship in Spirit But what man is sufficient for these things Our understandings are naturally so dull our wills so corrupt and our affections so disturbed that of our selves we know not what to ask nor how to Pray Therefore when according to the first Rule we have by humility prepared our hearts for Prayer then does the spirit of God descend upon us and help our infirmities he builds upon the Foundations of Nature improves our understanding into a stedfast Faith quickens our wills and desires with a sure hope and confidence in God and inflames our affections with a Divine love He so enlightens our Eyes as that we may look up and behold the Heavens opened to admit our supplications and so purifies our hearts that we may be worthy to receive the rays of Divine Majesty into our bosom in the happy return of our Prayers These are the gifts or the Spirit whereby he directs and assists us in our Prayers and Supplications and thus we must worship in Spirit and in Truth And if we take our measures of the Romish service by this Rule we shall find it very deficient As for instance their Praying in an unknown Tongue How can the spirit of a man be moved by that which he does not understand How can a man be edified by those words which only enter into his outward Ears and never sink into his heart it is not the turning over so many Beads nor the kneeling so long upon our knees that compleats the worship of God or prepares a Sacrifice worthy of him but the lifting up of our hearts as well as our hands to his Holy place therefore we may say of this sort of Prayer as St. Paul did of the Preaching in his time yet in the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding that by my voice I might teach others also than ten thousand words in an unknown Tongue This practice savours too much of the blind formal Devotion of a Jewish Synagogue and can never be proved to be the true Christian worship except they can convince us that miraculous effusion of the Spirit is still continued to the Church and men may now understand these unknown Tongues by the same Miracle whereby the Apostles spake them And as the Romish Church is deficient herein so our Dissenting Brethren notwithstanding all their pretences to the Spirit do not at all abound who by a new and strange Interpretation have forced this expression of worshipping in the Spirit to signifie only Extempore Prayer and confined all these Noble and Divine influences or the Holy Ghost to the mean ungenerous purposes of supplying the defects of our speech and inventing words for our imperfect thoughts As if forwardness of behaviour confidence of Face and readiness of the Tongue which are the reproachful Characters of a troublesome Companion were now become the only tests of a gifted Brother But supposing readiness of Expression to be really a gift of the Spirit yet how shall we know by what Spirit it is that this man speaks There is a deluding Spirit which under a pretence of extraordinary Piety has drawn multitudes together into extraordinary evils and this is no new thing especially in these our days There is a Spirit of Contention whereby many pretend to a more eminent degree of vertue and yet intend only a more eminent place of honour to themselves Such was the Spirit whereby the Sons of Zebedee prayed that they might sit one on the right hand of our Saviour and the other on the left There is a Spirit of Vanity and Ostentation and such a one it was that exalted Herod into his Throne clothed him with his Royal Apparel and prompted to him that vain-glorious Oration which he made unto the people All these Spirits fail not to give utterance to the person possessed therewith according to the mighty working of their Error their Interest or their Pride as particularly to Herod in so fluent and divine a manner that the poor deluded people took him not for a man but God Therefore it availeth very little for a man to have the gift of speaking by the Spirit except the people have the gift also of discerning the Spirit by which he speaks and this is a gift not very usual or remarkable in those that are the admirers of this sort of worship Since thercfore the Age of Miracles is gone and the immediate impulse of the Holy Ghost is departed from us 't is safer for us to trust to those Prayers which the wisest and best of men amongst us even those to whom under Christ we owe our Religion and Reformation have compiled with great Piety and Prudence and maintained with Constancy and Perseverance even to Martyrdom rather than to rely on the unskilful undigested Prayers of every forward inconsiderate worshipper Who would not quit the wild roving fancies of such as Pray for they think not they know not what to joyn in these Petitions which are so plain and easie that they are agreedable to the capacities of the meanest so judicious and accurate as to satisfie the wisest men so full and copious as to supply the wants of the greatest sinners so Substantial Pious and Grave as may befit the greatest Saints As for those therefore that quarrel with the matter of our Prayers we say no more but that all human things are subject to errors and when they can find out better we shall willingly submit to the change As for those that find fault with the manner of them and say these set Forms do stint the Holy Ghost and quench the Spirit I answer 't is very strange that these words which were composed with the greatest Art and Industry of man and with as great a measure at least of the Holy Spirit as any private person can pretend unto should come at length to be despised as flat and insignificant Rhetorick and a well framed Composure were wont to raise our affections and heighten our Devotion and can nothing move us now but what is remarkable for being mean and the rude product of our first thoughts Certainly it is not the goodness but the newness of this fashion that draws the people after it and the love of Novelty is in all cases a sign of Levity but in Religion it is commonly the cause of Superstition 'T is only a debauched and wanton stomach that requires variety of tasts and a constant Appetite is not only the sign but also the cause of Health But I would willingly know wherein a set form of Prayers does stint the Spirit cannot our Spirit be touched with a sence of our wants and an ardent desire of a supply as well by a premeditated as an extempore Prayer Cannot we Pray as Spiritually and as effectually in that perfect form of words which were prescribed by our Saviour as in those which are conceived by man Cannot we lift up our hearts to God with as much Zeal and Devotion in one of the Psalms of David for they are Spiritual Songs as in the sudden transports of a private Spirit dares any man be so presumptuous so blasphemous as to say that these Forms of worship are cold jejune and do stint the Spirit where then is their Argument against prescribed Liturgies But what if the Spirit should be stinted A Spirit is an unruly thing and 't is fit it should be circumscribed If the Spirit of St. Peter had been confined within the bounds of Prudence he had escaped many severe censures to which the evtravagance of his Zeal exposed him When he Prayed that they might build Altars to Moses and Elias the Evangelists upbraids him with a Spirit of inconsideration When he Prayed against the Passion of our Saviour he rebuked his Spirit for Diabolical saying Get thee behind me Satan And if the Spirit of the Great Apostle was subject to such errors in Prayer what greater confidence can we have in our new unpractised uninspired professors To conclude if neither the command of our Saviour nor the practice of all settled Churches throughout the world both Jewish and Christian can be of sufficient Authority to weigh down this new Model of Divinity if nothing but Mathematical Demonstrations can convince them of the truth and the least shadow of an Argumcnt will serve to confirm them in their errors if neither reason nor kindness can reclaim them I hope 't is no breach of Charity to think that it is not the Spirit of Prayer but the Spirit of Ostentation that animates their Assemblies and encourages this ungrounded Separation And since all human means have proved ineffectual we must commit the Cause to God who is the searcher of all hearts and Pray that by the power of his love he would come amongst us and turn the hearts of out disaffected Brethren That he would remove their prejudices and enlighten their understandings abate their heats and warm their affections towards us that they would leave off their uncharitable censures and shew forth the purity of their Faith by their certain gifts of the Spirits Humility and Love That they would for once suppose us to be but as Wise as Vertuous and as Sincere as they and after a kind impartial tryal I doubt not but their Charity will either pronounce us good or their Conversation will make us better FINIS

thou hast dealt with others so will God deal with thee also he will reward thy good deeds and pardon what thou in ignorance hast done amiss Then shall thy worship be always acceptable in his sight and by granting thy humble Petitions he will turn all thy Prayers into Praises and Thanksgiving This is the first Character of the true worship taken from the temper of the worshippers 't is our Saviours own Rule Ye shall know them by their fruits and the Fruits of the Gospel we know are Peace Charity Humility and Love Love is the fulfilling of the Law and the great glory of the Gospel and where this virtue is wanting there can be no pretence of Godliness no shew of a Christian Church The next Character may be taken from the place of worship our father 's worshiped in this mountain said the Samaritans to justifie their Separation and so say the Romanists unto us Our Fathers worshiped in this City the Fathers of the Church plead for us and Antiquity is on our side and where was your Church before Luther To this the Answer is as obvious as true Our Fathers worshiped at Rome but not all our Fathers for from the beginning there were several pious and learned Fathers and Martyrs of the Christian faith that own'd no dependence upon the Church of Rome There was then a Roman but not a Roman Catholick Church It was not Christian Humility and the Primitive Simplicity of the Gospel but Pride and Secular Interest that mov'd the later Pastors of that Church to bring all Nations under their yoke 'T was that Lordly humour which our Saviour reprov'd in the sons of Zebedee when they strove to be accounted greatest telling them that this ambition more became the Heathens than his Disciples the Kings of the Gentiles ye know exercise dominion but it shall not be so amongst you Our father 's worshipped at Rome it may be so So did Jacob in the mountain of Samaria when the whole Church of God consisted only in him and his Fathers house and yet this was no plea against the worship of the Temple when God had chosen that place for his Habitation and our Fathers who themselves worshiped at Rome have not told us that at Rome is the place where we also ought to worship If there must still be one Holy City to which all the tribes must go up certainly Jerusalem that City of Peace had been a fitter place for the Seat of that Universal Empire than Rome which was always the Seat of War and only made great by Tyrannies and Invasions upon all the world If that time of liberty be come when our worship shall not be confined either to the Temple of Jerusalem or the Mountain of Samaria we may also conclude that neither at Rome shall we worship the Father But yet our Fathers worshipped at Rome 'T is true but Rome was not then what now it is their Church and Faith was then as glorious as now t is offensive to all the world It exercised then no unjust Usurpations either upon the Persons or Consciences of men but taught Obedience to God and his Vicegerents upon Earth No man under what title soever sat in the Seat of God imposing upon the belief of others and creating new Articles of Faith but in all things they submitted themselves to the word of God as their only Universal Infallible Judg. And there was our Church before Luther and even before Popery it self But now since her innovoations are multiplyed and she has departed from the Truth no wonder if we forsake her in those things wherein she has forsaken Christ and fly from this City because of her abominations Her Fathers which worshipped in that place will not now justifie these degenerated Children and since they boast so much of their antiquity we must needs reckon the date of their worship like that of the Samaritans not from their Father Jacob a Holy Patriarch but from Salmaneser a Babylonish Prince Again Our Fathers worshipped in this mountain and therefore so do we said the Samaritans Thus also many amongst us say Our Fathers the Apostles and Primitive Martys of the Church worshipped in Mountains Dens Caves and private Houses and therefore so may we also To this I answer that the Apostles worshipped in the Temple and Publick Assemblies also when they might be permitted and it was only the iniquity and necessity of the times that drove them into private places which necessity being now removed a separation from the Publick Assemblies upon the bare account of Christian Liberty grounded upon that Practice of the Apostles is no move justifiable than that of the Samaritans from the Jewish Church upon the Authority of their Father Jacob. 'T is as if we should say Our Fathers the Apostles admitted none into the Church by Baptism unless they could first give an account of their Faith and therefore now also it is unlawful to Baptise Infants that have no knowledg of Christ Or thus our Fathers Abel Enoch and others were forced to marry their own Sisters when there were no other women in the world and therefore we may do the like Here we see what was commendable in the Apostles is pernicious in us what was necessary in our fore-Fathers is abominable Incest in our times so deceitful may an Argument prove drawn from the practice of our Fathers if we make not allowance for the different circumstances and necessities of the times The third Character of the true worshippers may be taken from the object of their worship Ye worship ye know not what said our Saviour And so may we also say to the Romanists ye worship Idols Graven Images Reliques Sepulchres Miraculous Trifles Superstitious Legends and ye know not what And though perhaps the more wise and learned of that Communion may be so clear-sighted as to look beyond this veil of wood and stone and have an Eye upon the true God whom they thus falsly represent yet certainly the ignorant multitude fall down and pay a real worship to these beggarly Elements and then how can they themselves be excused who by these unwarranted practices have brought the people into Idolatry The fourth and last remark upon the worshippers of these times may be concerning the manner of their worship which our Saviour has commanded to be in Spirit and in Truth By Spirit here we must understand first the faculties of the Soul which is the Spirit of a man and secondly the gifts of the Holy Ghost which is the Spirit of God In the first sence we are taught that God is a Spirit and we must worship him in our Spirit all our thoughts and inward faculties must be imployed in his service and we must adore him with all our heart our mind our soul and our strength our understandings must be clear and apprehensive of what we want our Wills must be ready and active to draw up our wants into Petitions and our affections must be zealous and