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	pray_v	prayer_n	5,348	5	6.6536	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