Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	body_n	life_n	word_n	7,125	5	4.2824	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48024	A relation of the death of the primitive persecutors written originally in Latin by L.C.F. Lactantius ; Englished by Gilbert Burnet, D.D., to which he hath made a large preface concerning persecution.; De mortibus persecutorum. English	Lactantius, ca. 240-ca. 320.; Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1687 (1687)	Wing L142; ESTC R234919	60,272	167

and he does that in the softest and most melting terms that can be imagined The Controversy concerning the Obligation that lay on the Gentiles for obeying the Mosaical Law was judged by the Apostles against the Iudaisers and the Inferences that depended on that Controversy were such that Saint Paul shews they went so far as to make void the Death of Christ yet the same Apostle is gentle to those that without seeing the extent of these consequences were carried away by those Iudaisers so that he acknowledges that in their observing them from a good motive they were acceptable to God and that as the Kingdom of God or the Gospel consisted not in those scrupulous Distinctions of Meats and of Drinks but in Righteousness Peace and Ioy in the Holy Ghost so he adds that every man was to endeavour to be fully persuaded in his own mind and was not to judge his Brother in such matters but to leave him to the Judgment of God. This way of managing a Controversie that was of such importance and that was maintained with so stiff an Opposition even to that extraordinary Authority that was lodged in the Apostles ought to have been the measure upon which all the succeeding Ages of the Church ought to have formed themselves and when the Apostles that had an infallible Assistance and so might have spoken in a strain of a higher Authority than any that have come after them yet thought fit to treat of those Matters in such an humble and softning stile those who cannot pretend to such a direction ought not to take upon them to dictate and to threaten and destroy those who differ from them It is indeed an amasing thing to see how much the Christian Church has departed from that Pattern and when one considers the first beginnings of the Christian and the Mahometan Religion he is not a little surprised to see the changes that have befallen both The blessed Author of our Holy Religion as he was a Pattern for Humility and Charity so he was made perfect thro Sufferings and his Religion as it contains precepts suteable to the Example that he gave which are set down in the plainest and most persuading Expressions possible so it gained its first Glory in the World and obtained its chief Triumphs over it by the Meekness and Gentleness and the Love and Charity of those who embraced it on the contrary the Mahometan Religion began in the Person of that Impostor with all the Fierceness of rage and was carried on by the Sword by which Mahomet pretended that he was sent of God to convert the World The Nations that have received the Mahometan Religion are by their Constitution rough and barbarous and yet how shameful a reverse of the first beginnings of the two Religions is but too visible to the World the Mahometans in a course of several Ages are so much softned that instead of that cruelty with which their Religion appeared at first they are now so gentle that those of a Religion which believes theirs to be only an Imposture live secure under them and know the Price that the Liberty of their Conscience must rise to and that being payed they enjoy in all other respects the Protection of the Government together with the publick Exercise of their Religion whereas on the other hand that part of the Christian Church that pretends the highest has so far departed from the Meekness of its Author and of his first Followers that notwithstanding all the polishings of Learning and Civility that are in it it is now the cruellest and the most implacable Society that has ever yet appeared in the World if there were no other Evidences but this single one it is enough to demonstrate how much that Body has departed from its first Institution and if our Saviour has given us a short Abridgment of the Character of the Devil in these two qualities that he is a Lyar and a Murderer then any Body of men that has decreed that faith is not to be kept to Hereticks and that has also decreed the Murder of so many Innocent Persons who have done nothing against that Civil Society to which they belong that deserves a forfeiture of their Lives such a Body I say if we may take our Saviours Character for a Rule looks more like the Followers of that fallen Spirit than the Body of which the Lamb of God is the Head. And when we consider the plain and express Words in which the great Duties of a Holy Life are delivered in Scripture but most particularly those of Love and Charity and the Darkness that are in many other passages of which the meaning is more disputable it looks like an unaccountable Perverseness to see men who still pretend to make that Book their Rule yet to be so visibly faulty in executing the one and so excessively severe in imposing the other of which I shall content my self to give one single Instance Pope Leo the Tenth in the Reformation that he set out with the concurrence of the Lateran Council order'd a severe Prosecution to be made of all Hereticks and that all the Laws against them should be put in execution but at the same time he order'd such slight punishment against those that should wilfully and publickly Blaspheme God and Christ even tho they relapsed in it over and over again that it is plain he had no mind to deter men with too much severity from the practice of that which was so common in his own Court a small Fine or the Forfeiture of the Profits of a Benefice is all the punishment that he laid on the one even when Clergy men relapsed in it This may serve to shew that tho naturally one is apt to think Blasphemy a much more heinous Crime than Heresy yet a Pope together with a Council which they pretend was General made a Distinction in the punishing of them which is very little for their Honour The Christians did during the first Ages declare highly against all Cruelty on the Account of a Difference of Persuasion in matters of Religion and tho their Interest Naturally led them to this yet we pass a very hard Judgment on those times if we think that they were only of that mind because the Power was then in the hands of their Enemies When the Empire turned Christian the very Heathen Worship was not only tolerated for above a whole Age together but the Heathens themselves continued to be in the chief Imployments of the Empire and it is pleasant to see how the Heathens that had so long persecuted the Christians and that had contrived the severest of all the Persecutions under Iulian which very probably had been put in execution if he had returned victorious from his Persian Expedition saw the State of things no sooner altered than they began to imploy all their Eloquence in the behalf of Toleration as if Liberty of Conscience had been an essential Right of Mankind from which they