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	lord_n	soul_n	6,252	5	5.0695	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62619	Sermons concerning the divinity and incarnation of our blessed Saviour preached in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry by John, late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.	Tillotson, John, 1630-1694.	1695 (1695)	Wing T1255A; ESTC R35216	99,884	305

to send his own his only Son into the World to seek and save us and by Him to repair all our ruines to forgive all our iniquities to heal all our spiritual diseases and to crown us with loving kindness and tender mercies And what Sacrifices of Praise and Thanksgiving should we also offer up to this gracious and most merciful Redeemer of ours the everlasting Son of the Father who debased himself so infinitely for our sakes and when he took upon Him to deliver Man did not abhor the Virgins womb Who was contented to be born so obscurely and to live all his life in a poor and persecuted condition and was pleased both to undergo and to overcome the sharpness of Death that he might open the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers Every time we have occasion to meditate upon this especially when we are communicating at his H. Table and receiving the blessed Symbols and Pledges of his precions Death and Passion How should our Hearts burn within us and leap for Joy How should the remembrance of it revive and raise our Spirits and put us into an Extasie of Love and Gratitude to this great Friend and Lover of Souls And with the B. Mother of our Lord how should our Souls upon that blessed occasion magnify the Lord and our Spirits rejoyce in God our Saviour The Holy men of old were transported with Joy at the obscure and confused apprehension and remote foresight of so great a Blessing at so great a distance It is said of Abraham the Father of the faithful that he saw His Day afar off and was glad How should we then be affected with Joy and Thankfulness to whom the Son of God and B. Saviour of Men is actually come He is come many ages ago and hath enlightened a great part of the World with his Glory Yea He is come to us who were in a manner separated from the rest of the World To Us is this great Light come who had so long sate in Darkness and the shadow of Death And this mighty Salvation which He hath wrought for us is near to every one of us that is willing to lay hold of it and to accept it upon those gracious terms and conditions upon which it is offer'd to us in his H. Gospel And by His Coming he hath delivered Mankind from that gross Ignorance and thick Darkness which covered the Nations And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding to know him that is true And we are in Him that is true even in his Son Jesus Christ This is the true God and eternal Life And then it immediately follows Little Children keep your selves from Idols What can be the meaning of this Caution and what is the Connection of it with the foregoing Discourse It is plainly this That the Son of God by His Coming had rescued Mankind from the sottish Worship of Idols and therefore he Cautions Christians to take great heed of relapsing into Idolatry by worshipping a Creature or the Image and likeness of any Creature instead of God And because he foresaw that it might be objected to Christians as in fact it was afterwards by the Heathen that the Worship of Christ who was a man was as much Idolatry as that which the Christians charged the Heathen withal Therefore St. John effectually to prevent the force of this plausible Objection though he perpetually throughout his Gospel declares Christ to be really a Man yet he expresly also affirms Him to be God and the true God and consequently Christians might safely pay Divine Worship to Him without fear or danger of Idolatry We are in Him that is true even in his Son Jesus Christ This is the true God and eternal Life Little Children keep your selves from Idols But this I am sensible is a Digression yet such a one as may not be alltogether useless To proceed then in the recital of those great Blessings which the Coming of the Son of God hath brought to Mankind He hath rescued us from the bondage of Sin and from the slavery of Satan He hath openly proclaimed Pardon and Reconciliation to the World He hath clearly revealed eternal Life to us which was but obscurely made known before both to Jews and Gentiles but is now made manifest by the appearance of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who hath abolished Death and brought Life and immortality to light by the Gospel He hath purchased this great Blessing for us and is ready to confer it upon us if we will be contented to leave our Sins and to be saved by Him A Condition without which as Salvation is not to be had so if it were it would not be desirable it could not make us happy because our Sins would still separate between God and us and the guilt and horrour of our own minds would make us eternally miserable And now surely we cannot but thus judge that all the Praises and acknowledgments all the Service and Obedience which we can possibly render to Him are infinitely beneath those infinite Obligations which the Son of God hath laid upon the Sons of men by his Coming into the World to save Sinners What then remains but that at all times and more especially at this Season we gratefully acknowledge and joyfully commemorate this great and amazing Goodness of God to us in the Incarnation of his Son for the Redemption and Salvation of the sinful and miserable Race of Mankind A Method and Dispensation of the Divine Grace and Wisdom not only full of mercy and condescension but of great power and vertue to purifie our hearts and to reform our Lives to beget in us a fervent love of God our Saviour and a perfect hatred and detestation of our Sins and a stedfast purpose and resolution to lead a new Life following the Commandments of God and walking in his ways all the days of our life In a word a Method that is every way calculated for our unspeakable Benefit and Comfort Since then the Son of God hath so graciously condescended to be made in all things like unto us Sin only excepted let us aspire to be as like to Him as is possible in the exemplary Holiness and Vertues of his Life We cannot be like Him in his Miracles but we may in his Mercy and Compassion We cannot imitate his Divine Power but we may resemble Him in his Innocency and Humility in his Meekness and Patience And as He assumed Human Nature so let us re-assume Humanity which we have in great measure depraved and put off and let us put on bowels of mercy towards those that are in misery and be ready to relieve the poor for His sake who being rich for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be made rich To conclude Let us imitate Him in that which was his great Work and business here upon Earth and which of all other did best become the Son of God I

to mean no more but the Chief of the Angels These were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dii Superi and Dij Caelestes superior and heavenly Gods The Scripture terms them the Host of Heaven meaning the Sun Moon and Stars which they supposed to be animated or at least to be inhabited by Angels or glorious Spirits whom they called Gods Other of their Deities were accounted much inferior to these being supposed to be the Souls of their deceased Heroes who for their great and worthy Deeds when they lived upon Earth were supposed after Death to be translated into the number of their Gods And these were called Semidei and Deastri that is half Gods and a sort of Gods And as the other were Celestial so these were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of Terrestrial Spirits that were Presidents and Procurators of Human affairs here below that is a middle sort of Divine Powers that were Mediators and Agents between God and Men and did carry the Prayers and Supplications of Men to God and bring down the Commands and Blessings of God to Men. But in the midst of all this Crowd and confusion of Deities and the various Superstitions about them the Wiser Heathen as Thales Pythagoras Socrates Plato Aristotle Tully Plutarch and others preserved a true Notion of One Supreme God whom they defined an infinite Spirit pure from all Matter and free from all imperfection And all the variety of their Worship was as they pretended in excuse of it but a more particular owning of the various representations of the Divine Power and Excellencies which manifested themselves in the World and of the several communications of Blessings and Favours by them imparted to Men and Tertullian observes that even when Idolatry had very much obscured the Glory of the Sovereign Deity yet the greater part of Mankind did still in their common Forms of Speech appropriate the Name of God in a more especial and peculiar manner to One saying If god grant If God please and the like So that there is sufficient ground to believe that the Unity of the Divine Nature or the Notion of One Supreme God Creator and Governor of the World was the Primitive and general belief of Mankind And that Polytheism and Idolatry were a corruption and degeneracy from the Original Notion which Mankind had concerning God as the Scripture-History doth declare and testify And this account which I have given of the Heathen Idolatry doth by no means excuse it For whatever may be said by way of extenuation in behalf of some few of the wiser and more devout among them the generality were grossly guilty both of believing more Gods and of worshipping false Gods And this must needs be a very great Crime since the Scripture every where declares God to be particularly jealous in this Case and that he will not give his glory to another nor his praise to graven Images Nay we may not so much as make use of sensible Images to put us in mind of God lest devout Ignorance seeing the Worship which Wise men paid towards an Idol should be drawn to terminate their Worship there as being the very Deity it self which was certainly the Case of the greatest part of the Heathen World And surely those Christians are in no less danger of Idolatry who pay a Veneration to Images by kneeling down and praying before them and in this they are much more inexcusable because they offend against a much clearer Light and yet when they go about to justify this Practice are able to bring no other nor better Pleas for themselves than the Heathen did for their worshipping of Images and for praying to their inferior Deities whom they looked upon as Mediators between the Gods in Heaven and Men upon Earth There is but one Objection that I know of against the general Consent of Mankind concerning the Unity of God and it is this That there was an ancient Doctrine of some of the most ancient Nations that there were two First Causes or Principles of all things the one the Cause of all Good and the other of all the Evil that is in the World The reason whereof seems to have been that they could not apprehend how things of so contrary a nature as Good and Evil could proceed from one and the same Cause And these two Principles in several Nations were called by several Names Plutarch says that among the Greeks the Good Principle was called God and the Evil Principle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Devil In conformity to which ancient Tradition the Manichees a Sect which called themselves Christians did advance two Principles the one infinitely Good which they supposed to be the Original Cause of all the good which is in the World the other infinitely Evil to which they ascribed all the evils that are in the World But all this is very plainly a corruption of a much more ancient Tradition concerning that old Serpent the Devil the Head of the fallen Angels who by tempting our First Parents to transgress a positive and express Law of God brought Sin first into the World and all the Evils consequent upon it of which the Scripture gives us a most express and particular account And as to the Notion of a Being infinitely Evil into which this Tradition was corrupted after Idolatry had prevailed in the World besides that it is a Contradiction it would likewise be to no purpose to assert two opposite Principles of infinite that is of equal force and Power for two Infinites must of necessity be equal to one another because nothing can be more or greater than infinite and therefore if two infinite Beings were possible they would certainly be equal and could not be otherwise Now that the Notion of a Principle infinitely Evil is a Contradiction will be very plain if we consider that what is infinitely Evil must in strict Reasoning and by necessary consequence be infinitely imperfect and therefore infinitely weak and for that reason though never so malicious and mischievous yet being infinitely weak and foolish could never be in a capacity either to contrive mischief or to execute it But if it should be admitted that a Being infinitely mischievous could be infinitely knowing and powerful yet it could effect no Evil because the opposite Principle of infinite Goodness being also infinitely Wise and Powerful they would tye up one another's hands So that upon this supposition the Notion of a Deity must signify just nothing because by virtue of the eternal opposition and equal conflict of these two Principles they would keep one another at a perpetual Baye and being just an equal Match to one another the one having as much mind and power to do good as the other to do evil instead of being two Deities they would be but two Idols able to do neither good nor evil And having I hope now sufficiently cleared this Objection I shall proceed to shew how agreeable this Principle that there is but