Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	bear_v	enter_v	kingdom_n	5,396	5	6.1932	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58941	Sacramentorum encomium: or The praise of the sacraments in a letter written in the year 1654 to the preacher then at Barham in the county of Kent, with-holding the holy sacraments from a great number of godly souls, unless they would subject themselves against laws and good conscience to a rigid Presbyterian government. Wherein the said government is plainly and undeniably proved to be (of all other) the most injurious to the magistrate, most oppressive to the subject, &c. Published by a member of the parish of Barham, for the satisfaction of all wel-affected subjects, and good Christians.	Member of the parish of Barnham.	1661 (1661)	Wing S223B; ESTC R219820	25,942	69

us they knew them to serve as bonds of obedience to God strict obligations to the mutual exercise of Christian Charity provocations to godliness preservations from sin memorials of the principal benefits of Christ annexed for ever unto the new Testament as other Rites were before with the Old they knew them to be warrants for the more security of our belief marks of distinction to seperate Gods own from strangers heavenly Ceremonies sanctified by God himself and ordained to be administred in his Church as signs to know whereby God doth impart the vital or saving grace of Christ unto all that are capable thereof and as means which God requireth in them unto whom he imparteth Grace For sith God in himself is invisible and cannot by us be disc●rned working therefore when it seemeth good in the eyes of his heavenly wisdome that men for some special intent and purpose should take notice of his glorious presence he giveth them some plain and sensible token whereby to know what they cannot see For Moses to see God was imposible yet a Exod. 2.3 Moses by fire knew where the glory of God extraordinarily was present The b Joh. 5 4. Angel by whom God endued the waters of the Pool called Bethesda with supernatural vertue to heal was not seen of any yet the time of the Angels presence known by the troubled motions of the waters themselves The Apostles c Act. 2.3 by fiery tongues which they saw were admonished when the Spirit which they could not behold was upon them In like manner it is with us Christ and his holy Spirit with all the blessed effects though entring into the soul of man we are not able to apprehend or express how do notwithstanding give notice of the times when they use to make their access because it pleaseth Almighty God to communicate by sensible means those blessings which are incomprehensible Our Predecessor knew the necessity of receiving the Sacraments that grace is a consequent of them a thing which accompanieth them as their end that it is not Gods ordinary will to bestow the grace of the Sacraments on any but by the Sacraments which grace also they that receive by Sacraments or with Sacraments receive it from him and not from them they knew that saving grace which Christ originally is or hath for the general good of the whole Church he severally deriveth 〈◊〉 every member thereof by Sacraments and that they serve as the Instruments of God to that end and purpose Hooker moral instruments the use whereof is in our hands the effect in his they knew that for the use of them we have his express commandment for the effect his promise so that without our obedience to the one there is of the other no apparant assurance and we are not to doubt but that they really give what they promise and are what they signifie they knew that the Sacraments are not bare resemblances or memorials of things absent or naked signs and Testimonies assuring us of grace received bef●re but as they are indeed and in verity means effectual whereby God when we take the Sacraments delivereth into our hands that grace available unto eternal life which grace the Sacraments signifie or represent and are they such effectual means are they necessary to salvation are they by God himself for ever annexed unto the new Testament how great then is the neglect how great the Offence how detestable the wilfulness of those men who though impowred set apart in a great measure for that purpose and required by God himself to communicate them in order to the salvation of his people shall notwithstanding be careless in performance of his will yea peremptorily deny to put his most sacred and saving Ordinances in execution Hath the great Judg of all the world said that a Joh. 3.33 unless a man be born of water the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of heaven except you eat of the b Joh. 6.53 flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you and hath the mirror of piety and Learning affirmed that we may with consent of the whole ●hristian world Hooker conclude the Sacrament of Baptism and the Supper of the Lord to be necessary the one to initiate or begin the other to consummate and make perfect our life in Christ who then can imagine otherwise but great must be the ignorance or obstinacy of those kind of men who deny the administration of those heavenly Mysteries which are so necessary to eternal life For as concerning the Sacrament of Baptism in the first place we believe as we are not naturally men without birth so neither are we Christian men in the eye of the Church of God but by new birth nor according to the manifest ordinary course of divine dispensation new born but by that Baptism which both declareth and maketh us Christians In which respect we justly hold it to be the door of our actual entrance into Gods house the first apparant begining life a seal perhaps to the grace of election before received b●t to our sanctification here a step which hath not any before it The Law of Christ tyeth all men to receive this baptism expresly specified by water and the Spirit water as duty required on our parts the Spirit as a gift God bestoweth for unless as the Spirit is a necessary inward cause so water were a necessary outward means to our regeneration what construction should we give unto those words to be new born and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even of water why are we taught a Eph. 5.2 that with water God doth purifie and cleanse his Church wherefore do the Apostles of Christ term baptism b Tit. 3.5 a bath of Regeneration what purpose had they in giving men advice to c Act. 2.38 receive outward baptism and in perswading them it did avail to remission of sins If then Christ himself who giveth salvation do require baptism it is our duty who look for salvation seriously to do that which is required and religiously to feare the danger which may grow by the want thereof and it behooveth all Ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ who have any fear of God in their hearts and care of delivering mens souls from sin to teach men the necessity thereof not omit when ocasion is offered this their necessary duty in their own persons For though we grant that those sentences which make Sacraments most necessary to eternal life are no prejudice to their salvation that want them by some inevitable necessity and without any fault of their own yet we say it ought in reason to be acknowledged likewise that for as much as the Lord himself maketh Baptism necessary necessary whether we respect the good received by it or the Testimony yeilded unto God of that humility and meek obedience which reposing wholy it self on the absolute authority of his commandment and

God And how can any man be so ignorant so stupid so void of reason as to think that these men can be led by an infallible spirit who in this manner like the Lords of the Heathen seek for Dominion and Power who aim at Authority and Rule in this world of which they cannot but know their Masters Kingdome is not who being puffed up with an unparallel'd pride have made themselves drunk with the spirit of Antichrist and so drunk that they begin to stagger and are in danger of falling down even level with the the ground But sith they the better to support themselves from falling have thought fit to joyn unto them a sort of men whom they have Christned by the name of lay Elders and will have them looked upon as Commissioners of Christ we will let you know that we are not ignorant of the true reason of their annexing this conjunction copulative unto them for the politick projector and founder of this new discipline by name Calvin a man famous for his great wisdome the more surely and easily to bring that beast of many heads the people to assent contribute their labour and endeavours towards the erecting of the building whereof he had before hand conceived an Idea in his mind thought good to tender an offer to them plausible enough in outward shew that for every Minister who should sit perpetual Judg they should annually chuse two lay Elders out of every Parish amongst themselves and they to sit with them in the standing Ecclesiastical Court which was to be established to be Judges together with them in the same and these two sorts should have a care of all mens manners power of determining all kind of Ecclesiastical causes and Authority to convene to controul to punish as far as with Excommunication whomsoever they should think worthy none either small or great excepted now the people who are ever taken and deluded with fair shews and to the worlds end will be so rather then realities conceiting this ods of two to one to be sufficient to remedy any inconvenience might arise by the Ministry willingly enough embraced the Offer and joyntly set to their helping hands and heads to bring the business to perfection and accordingly after no small opposition which was made by the wiser sort effected what they intended we say no small opposition for the more quick-sighted and men of profoundest judgment among the layty foresaw that this filling up of the seates in the Consistory with so great a number of lay-men was but to please the mind of the people to the end they might think their own sway somewhat but when things came to tryal of practice their Pastors learning would be at all times of force to over-perswade simple men who knowing the time of their own Presidentship to be but short would alwayes stand in fear of their Ministers perpetual Authority and hereupon professed with greater stomach their Judgments that such a discipline was little better then Popish Tyranny disguised and tendered unto them under a new form But how much soever the more prudential men gainsaid this upstart discipline yet certain it is in those times of distraction as the Citty of Geneva was then in as we have in like manner seen in these our dayes by woful experience Anno Do. 1541. not the wise but the many like a boisterous torrent beares down all before them and to the disturbance of the world do what they list so they established this discipline A discipline which they peremptorily affirmed to have been taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God and yet full fifteen hundred years have passed from the birth of our Saviour till the setting up thereof and they cannot during all that time shew us one Church upon the face of the whole earth which ever found out or erected it till this present time and now forsooth this discipline is become The Scepter of Christ the eternal Gospel and where did this Scepter lie hid during all these hundreds of years that we cannot find out the least foot-step of it in the meanest village of Christendome This world draws toward an end was this discipline fitted and contrived for the world to come or how can it be the eternal Gospel We should be injurious unto Charity it self if we should affirm all these men who are of this stamp to have wilfully gone out of this right way into this Labyrinth and accordingly to have led others a long with them in a maze or should surmise all those who have been misguided knowingly to continue in an error no we have a better opinion of some of them who no doubt have a conceit of the divinity of their discipline and yet are truly godly men in their hearts sincere in their affections upright in their meanings but we say certainly godly men in all ages have erred and without all peradventure so do the best of these and that the founder hereof himself was but a man we all know we no less know men are but men and humanum est errare what moved him at first to fancy this discipline and afterwards to establish it is to be seen at large in judicious Hooker his preface Nature worketh in us all a love to our own counsels The contradiction of others is a fan to in flame that love Our love set on fire to maintain that which once we have done sharpneth the wit to dispute to argue and by all means to reason for it wherefore a marvel it were if a man of so great capacity having such incitements to make him desirous of all kind of furtherances unto his cause could espie in the whole Scripture of God nothing which might breed at the least a probable opinion of likelihood that Divine Authority it self was the same way somewhat inclinable And all which the wit even of Calvin was able from thence to draw by sifting the very utmost sentence and sillable is no more then that certain speeches there are which to him did seem to intimate that all Christian Churches ought to have their Elderships endued with power of excommunication and that a part of those Elderships every where should be chosen out from amongst the Layty after that form which himself had framed Geneva unto But what argument can be shewn wherby it was ever prov'd by Calvin that any one sentence of Scripture doth necessarily inforce these things * Or that those Elders were Lay-men Author to the Petition directed to his Majesty And his followers who with all their learning have endeavoured to extol his Tenents to the highest have notwithstanding acknowledged that with whom the truth is they know not neither do they all agree in one opinion and of them which are at agreement the most part through a courteous enducement have followed one man as their guide and that one man therein most assuredly hath swerved from the Truth And what can they be thought but