Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	bless_a	jesus_n	lord_n	6,161	5	3.6174	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50170	The triumphs of the reformed religion in America the life of the renowned John Eliot, a person justly famous in the church of God, not only as an eminent Christian and an excellant minister among the English, but also as a memorable evangelist amoung the Indians of New-England : with some account concerning the late and strange success of the Gospel in those parts of the world which for many ages have lain buried in pagan ignorance / written by Cotton Mather.	Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728.; Mather, Increase, 1639-1723. De successu Evangelii apud Indos in Nova-Anglia epistola. English.	1691 (1691)	Wing M1163; ESTC W479490	74,580	162

Evangelist or one separated for the employment of Preaching the Gospel in such places where no Churches have hitherto been gathered be not an Office that should be continued in our days but this I know that our Eliot very notably did the Service and Business of such an Officer ¶ The Natives of the Countrey now Possessed by the New-Englanders had been forlorn and wretched Heathen ever since their first herding here and tho we know not When or How those Indians first became Inhabitants of this mighty Continent yet we may guess that prob●bly the Divel decoy'd those miserable Salvages hither in hopes that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus would never come here to destroy or disturb his Absolute-Empire over them But our Eliot was in such ill terms with the Divel as to alarm him with sounding the Silver-Trump●ts of Heaven in his Territories and make some Noble and Zealous Attempts towards outing him of his Ancient possessions here Just before the first Arrival of the English in these parts a prodigious Mortality had swept away vast Numbers of the poor Indians and those Pagans who being told by a Shipwrack'd Frenchman which dy'd in their hands That God would shortly extirpate them and introduce a more civil and worthy people into their place blasphemously reply'd That God could not kill them were quickly kill'd with such a raging and wasting Pe●tilence as left the very earth covered with their Carcases Nevertheless there were I think Twenty several Nations if I may call them so of Indians upon that spot of ground which fell under the Influence of our Three Vni●●d Colonies and our Eliot was willing to rescue as many of them as he could from that old usurping Land-Lord of America who is by the wrath of God the Prince of this world I cannot find that any besides the Holy Spirit of God first moved him to the blessed Work of Evangelizing these perishing Indians 't was that Holy Spirit which laid before his mind the Idaea of that which is now on the Seal of the Massachuset-Colony A poor Indian having a Label going from his mouth with a COME OVER AND HELP US It was the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ which enkindled in him a Pitty for the dark dying damning souls of these Natives whom the god of this world had blinded through all the By past Ages He was none of those that make The Salvation of the Heathen an Article of their Creed b●t setting aside the unrevealed and extraordinary Steps which the Holy One of Israel may take out of His usual Pathes he thought men to be lost if our Gospel be hidden from them and he was of the same Opinion with one of the Ancients who said Some have endeavoured to prove Plato a Christian till they prove themselves little better than Heathen It is indeed a principle in the Turkish Alcoran That Let a man's Religi●n be what it will he shall be saved if he conscientiously live up to the Rules of it but our Eliot was no Mahometan He could most heartily subscribe to that passage in the Articles of the Ch. of Eng● They are to be held accursed who presume to say that every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law ●nd Light of Nature For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us Only the Name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be Saved And it astonished him to see many dissembling Subscribers of those Articles while they have grown up to such a Phrensy as to deny peremptorily all Church-state and all Salvation to all that are not under Diocesan Bishops yet at the same time to grant that the Heathen might be saved without the Knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ No it very powerfully moved his holy Bowels to hear the Thunderclapps of that Imprecation over the heads of our Naked Indians Pour out thy Fury upon the Heathen that know thee not and thought he What shall I do to rescue these Heathen from that all-devouring Fury But when this Charitable pitty had once begun to flame there was a concurrence of many things to cast Oyl into it All the good men in the Country were glad of his Engagement in such an undertaking the Ministers especially encouraged him and those in the Neighbourhood kindly supply'd his place and perform'd his work in part for him at Roxbury ●hile he was Abroad Labouring among them that were Without Hereunto he was further ●wakened by those expressions in the Royal Charter in the assurance and protection whereof this Wilderness was first peopled namely To win and incite the Natives of that Country to the knowledge and Obedience of the only true God and Saviour of Mankind and the Christian Faith in our Royal Intention and the Adventurers free profession is the principal end of the Plantation And the remarkable zeal of the Romish Missionaries compassing Sea and Land that they might make Proselytes made his devout Soul think of it with a further Disdain that we should come any whit behind in our care to Evangelize the Indians whom we dwelt among Lastly when he had well begun this Evangelical Business the good God in an answer to his Prayers mercifully stirred up a liberal Contribution among the godly people in England for the promoting of 〈◊〉 by means whereof a considerable Estate and Income was at length entrusted in the hands of an Honourable Corporation by whom 't is to this Day very carefully employ'd in the Christian Service which it was designed for And then in short inasmuch as our Lord Jesus had bestow'd on us our Eliot was gratefully and generously desirous to obtain for him The Heathen for an Inheritance and the utmost parts of the Earth for a Possession The exemplary Charity of this excellent person in this important Affair will not be seen in its due Lustre unless we make some Reflections upon several circumstances which he behold these forlorn Indians in Know then that these doleful Creatures are the veriest Ruines of Mankind vvhich are to be found any vvhere upon the face of the Earth No such Estates are to be expected among them as have been the B●●●s which the pretended Converters in other Countries ha●e snapped at One might see among them what an hard master the Devil is to the most devoted of his Vassals These abject Creatures live in a Country full of Mines we have already made entrance upon out Iron and in the very surface of the ground among us there lies Coper enough to suppl● all this world besides other Mines hereafter to be exposed but our shiftless Indians were never Owners of so much as a Knife till we come among them their name for an English man was a Knife man Stone was instead of Metal for their tools and for their Coins they have only little Beads with Holes in them to string them upon a bracelet whereof some are white and of these there go six for a