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
A94160	A sermon preached at Nevvport in the Isle of Wight, October 1648. In the time of the treaty. / By Robert Sanderson, D.D. chaplain to the late King, and Regius-Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxon.	Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663.	1653 (1653)	Wing S628; Thomason E702_15; ESTC R203446	18,328	25

Much of the ambiguity of the word I confess is cut off when it is opposed to flesh yet even then also it wanteth no varietie The literal and mystical sense the Ordinances of the old and new Testament the body and the soul sensuality and reason the corruption of nature and the grace of God all these may according to the peculiar exigence of several places be understood by the termes of Flesh and Spirit Generally the word Spirit in the common notion of it importeth a thing of subtile parts but of an operative qualitie so that the less any thing hath of matter and the more of vertue the nearer it cometh to the nature of a Spirit as the Wind and the quint-essences of Vegetables or Minerals extracted by Chymical operations We use to say of a man that is of a sad sluggish and flegmatick temper that he hath no spirit but if he be lively active quick and vigorous we then say he hath a spirit in him It is said of the Queen of Sheba when she saw the Wisdom and Royal state of King Salomon that there was no more spirit left in her that is she stood mute and amazed at it as if she had no life speech sense or motion in her the soul is therefore call'd a spirit because it being it self no bodily substance it yet actuateth and enliveneth the body and is the inward Principle of life thereunto called therefore The spirit of life And Saint James saith The body without the spirit is dead that is it is a liveless lump of flesh without the soul So that whatsoever is Principium agendi internum may in that respect and so far forth borrow the name of a spirit insomuch as the very flesh it self so far forth as it is the fountain of all those evil works mentioned in the fore-going verses may in that respect be called a spirit and so it is by Saint James The spirit that is in us lusteth after envy saith he that is in very deed the flesh that is in us for among the lusts and works of the flesh is envie reckoned in the very next verse before the Text To come up close to the point for I fear I have kept off too long as they stand here opposed By Flesh I take to be clearly meant the natural corruption of man And by Spirit the Supernatural grace of God even as the same words are also taken in some other places as namely in that saying of our Saviour John 3. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit Which words may serve as a good Commentary upon this part of the Text for they do not only warrant the Interpretation but afford us also the Reason of it under the Analogie of a twofold Birth or Generation The Generation whether of Plants or living Creatures is effectual by that prolifical vertue which is in the Seed Answerable therefore unto the twofold Birth spoken of in the Scriptures there is also a twofold Seed The first Birth is that of the old man by Natural Generation whereby we are born the sons of Adam The second Birth is that of the new man by Spiritual Regeneration by which we are born the sons of God Answerable whereunto the first Seed is Semen Adae the seed of Adam derived unto us by carnal Propagation from our natural Parents who are therefore called The fathers of our flesh together wherewith is also derived that uncleanness or corruption which upon our first Birth cleaveth so inseparably to our nature and is the inward Principle from which all the works of the flesh have their emanation But then there is another Seed Semen Dei as S. John cals it the seed of the second Adam Jesus Christ God blessed for ever derived unto us by the communication of the Holy Spirit inwardly renewing us together wherewith is also derived a measure of inherent supernatural grace as the inward Principle whence all these choyce fruits of the Spirit do flow So that upon the whole matter these two points are clear First clear it is that all the wicked practices recited and condemned in the fore-going verses with all other of like quality do proceed meerly from the corruption that is in us from our own depraved minds and wils without any the least co-operation of the Holy Spirit of God therein It cannot stand with the goodness of God to be the Principal and neither with his goodness nor greatness to be an Accessory in any sinful action He cannot be either the Author or the Abettor of any thing that is evil Whoso therefore hath committed any sin let him take heed he do not add another and a worse to it by charging God with it rather let him give God and his Spirit the glory by taking all the blame and shame of it to himself and his own flesh All sinful works are works of the flesh Secondly It is clear also that all the holy affections and performances here mentioned with all other Christian vertues and graces accompanying salvation not here mentioned though wrought immediately by us and with the free consent of our wils are yet the fruit of Gods Spirit working in us that is to say they do not proceed Originally from any strength of nature or any inherent power in mans free will nor are they acquired by the culture of Philosophy the advantages of Education or any improvement whatsoever of natural abilities by the helps of Art or Industry but are in truth the proper effects of that supernatural grace which is given unto us by the good pleasure of God the Father merited for us by the precious blood of God the Son and conveyed into our hearts by the sweet and secret inspiration of God the Holy Ghost Love Joy Peace c. are fruits not at all of the Flesh but meerly and entirely of the Spirit All those very many passages in the new Testament which either set forth the unframableness of our nature to the doing of any thing that is good Not that we are sufficient of our selves to think a good thought In me that is in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing and the like or else ascribe our best performance to the glory of the grace of God Without me you can do nothing All our sufficiency is of God Not of our selves it is the gift of God It is God that worketh in you both the will and the deed and the like are so many clear confirmations of this truth Upon the evidence of which truth it is that our Mother the Church hath taught us in the Publick Service to beg at the hands of Almighty God that he would indue us with the grace of his Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to his holy Word and again consonantly to the matter we are now in hand with almost in terminis that he would give to all men increase of grace to

hear meekly his Word and to receive it with pure affection and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit as without which grace it were not possible for us to amend our lives or to bring forth such fruits according as God requireth in his holy Word And the Reason is clear because as the Tree is such must the fruit be Do men look to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles or can they expect from a salt Fountain other then brackish water certainly what is born of flesh can be no better then flesh Who can bring a clean thing out of that which is unclean or how can any thing that good is proceed from a heart all the imaginations of the thoughts whereof are onely and continually evil If we would have the fruit good reason will and our Saviour prescribeth the same Method that order be taken first to make the Tree good But you will say it is as impossible so to alter the nature of the flesh as to make it bring forth good Spiritual fruit as it is to alter the nature of a Crab or Thorn so as to make it bring forth a pleasant Apple Truly and so it is If you shall endeavor to mend the fruit by altering the stock you shall find your labour altogether fruitless A Crab will be a Crab still when you have done what you can and you may as well hope to wash an Aethiopian white as to purge the flesh from sinful pollution The work therefore must be done quite another way not by alteration but by addition that is leaving the old Principle to remain as it was by super-inducing ab extra a new Principle of a different and more kindly qualitie We see the experiment daily in the grafting of Trees A Crab-stock if it have a cyon of some delicate Apple is artificially grafted in it look what branches are suffered to grow out of the stock it self they will all follow the nature of the stock and if they bring forth any fruit at all it will be sowr and styptick but the fruit that groweth from the graft will be pleasant to the taste because it followeth to the nature of the graft We read of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} An engrafted word James 1. Our carnal hearts are the old stock which before the word of God be grafted in it cannot bring forth any Spiritual fruit acceptable to God but when by the powerful operation of his holy Spirit the word which we hear with our outward ears is inwardly grafted therein it then bringeth forth the fruits of good living so that all the bad fruits that appear in our lives come from the old stock the flesh and if there be any good fruit of the Spirit in us it is from the vertue of that word of grace that is grafted in us It should be our care then since the Scriptures call so hard upon us for fruits To be fruitful in good works to bring forth fruits meet for repentance c. and threaten us with excision and fire if we do not bring forth fruit and that good fruit too It should be our care I say to bestow as much diligence about our hearts as good husbands do about their fruit-trees they will not Suffer any sucker or luxuriant branches to grow from the stock but assoon as they begin to appear or at least before they come to any bigness cut them off and cast them away by so doing the graft thrives the better and brings forth fruit both sooner and fairer God hath intrusted us with the custody and culture of our own hearts as Adam was put into the Garden to keep it and to dress it and besides the charge given us in that behalf it behoveth us much for our own good to keep them with all diligence if we husband them well the benefit will be ours he looketh for no more but his Rent and that an easie Rent the glory and the thanks the fruits wholly accrue to us as usu-fructuaries but if we be such ill husbands so careless and improvident as to let them sylvescere overgrow with wild and superfluous branches to hinder the thriving of the grafts whereby they become ill-liking and unfruitful we shall neither answer the trust committed to us nor be able to pay our Rent we shall bring him in no glory nor do our selves any good but run behind hand continually and come to nought at last It will behove us therefore if we will have our fruit in holiness and the end everlasting life to look to it betimes lest some root of bitterness springing up put us to more trouble then we are aware of for the present or can be well able to deal withal afterwards The flesh will find us work enough to be sure it is ever and anon putting forth spurns of Avarice Ambition Envy Revenge Pride Luxury some noysome lust or other Like a rotten Dunghil that 's rank of weeds if we neglect them but a little out of a thought that they can do no great harm yet or that we shall have time enough to snub them hereafter we do it to our own certain disadvantage if not utter undoing we shal either never be able to overcome them or not without very much more labour and difficulty then we might have done it at the first In the mean time whilst these superfluous excrescencies {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} I know not how to call them are suffered they draw away the sap to their own nourishment and so pine and starve the grafts that they never come to good {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} saith S. James we 'l translate it Wherefore laying aside perhaps it may import a little more the whole verse is worth the further considering if we had time to insist upon it it seemeth to allude throughout to the lopping off all those suckers or superfluous branches that hinder the prospering of Grafts as if he had said If you desire the holy word of God which is to be grafted in your hearts should bring forth fruit to the saving of your souls suffer not these filthy and naughty superfluities of fleshly lusts to hinder the growth thereof but off with them away with them and the sooner the better that is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} I should from this point before I had left it but that I have other things to speak to and may not insist have pressed two things more First the necessity of our Prayers It is true our endeavors are necessary God that doth our work for us will not do it without us but without the assistance of his holy Spirit all our endeavors are bootless and we have no reason to presume of his assistance if we think our selves too good to ask it We may not think we have done all our part toward fruit-bearing when we have planted and watered until we have earnestly sollicited him to

A SERMON Preached at NEWPORT IN THE ISLE of WIGHT October 1648. In the time of the TREATY BY ROBERT SANDERSON D. D. Chaplain to the late KING and Regius-Professor of Divinity in the University of OXON. London Printed by T. M. for Andrew Crook at the Green Dragon in S. Pauls Church-yard 1653. A SERMON PREACHED In the Isle of WIGHT Before the late KING GALAT. 5. 22 23. Ver. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance against such there is no Law HE that shall impartially look upon former and the present times shall find that of Salomon exactly true There is no new thing under the sun Vetus fabula novi Histriones The things we see done are but the same things that have been done onely acted over again by new Persons and with a few new circumstances It was in the Apostles times and in the Churches of Galatia even as it is with us in these dayes False Teachers had crept in among them who by their Hypocrisie and pretensions of the Spirit had so corrupted their Faith that they were removed after a sort unto another Gospel and so extremely sowred their Charity that from provoking and envying they were now grown to biting and devouring one another The Apostle wondering at this so unexpected a change I marvel you are so soon removed Gal. 1. 6. to see them so befooled in their understandings and bewitched in their affections as to suffer so sore and sudden a decay in the two most Essential parts of Christian Religion Faith and Charity thought it high time for him after he had first schooled them O foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you to offer this advice towards the allaying of those heats and distempers that were the causes of this so sad and dangerous an alteration The Remedy he prescribeth for that end verse 16. is short but very sure if they will follow it Walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh As if he had said You talk much of the Spirit but you make it little appear in the fruit of your lives that you are led by the Spirit The Spirit and the flesh are contraries and they lust contrary things verse 17. If you were as careful to walk in the Spirit as you are to boast of it you would not be so forward as now you are by the cherishing of unbrotherly contentions and other wayes to fulfil the Lusts of the flesh An hard thing it is to bring an overweening Hypocrite to a true understanding of himself for Pride and Hypocrisie are two such things as few men are willing to own That they might therefore with better certainty be able to discern whether they were indeed Spiritual or but yet carnal the Apostle proceedeth to describe the flesh and the Spirit by sundry their different effects A Catalogue we have for that purpose of the works of the flesh in seventeen particulars in the three next verses before the Text and then another Catalogue of the fruit of the Spirit in nine Particulars in the Text it self Wherein we may observe three things First the Notion or general Description of spiritual graces as they are here proposed they go under this name The fruit of the Spirit Secondly the particular species given in under that name or Notion They are these nine Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness and Temperance Thirdly a special Priviledge belonging to all and every the aforesaid particulars to wit exemption from the Law Against such there is no Law In the general Description which is like to be our onely business at this time the thing we are to take notice of is the difference that may be observed between the Titles under which Saint Paul hath entered the several particulars of both sorts as they are set down the one in the beginning of verse 19. The works of the flesh are manifest which are these Adultery c. The other in the beginning of verse 22. But the fruit of the spirit is Love c. And these differences are four First Those effects of the former sort proceed originally from the flesh these from the Spirit Secondly Those are rather styled by the name of Works these by the name of Fruit The Works of the flesh but the Fruit of the Spirit Thirdly Those are set forth as many and apart Works in the Plural these as many but united into one Fruit in the Singular Fourthly Those are expresly said to be manifest of these no such thing at all mentioned The first difference which ariseth from the nature of the things themselves as they relate to their several proper causes is of the four the most obvious and important and it is this That whereas the vicious habits and sinful actions Catalogued in the former verses are the productions of the flesh The graces and vertues specified in the Text are ascribed to the Spirit as to their proper and Original cause they are not the Works of the flesh as the former but the Fruit of the Spirit Where the first question that every man will be ready to ask is What is here meant by the Spirit The necessity of expressing Supernatural and Divine things by words taken from Natural or Humane affairs hath produced another necessity of enlarging the significations of sundry of those words to a very great latitude which is one special cause of the obscurity which is found in sundry places of Holy Scripture and consequently of the difficulty of giving the proper and genuine sense of such places and consequently to that amidst so many interpretations of one and the same place wh●lst each contendeth for that sense which himself hath pitched upon of infinite Disputes and Controversies in point of Religion Among which words three especially I have observed all of them of very frequent use in the New Testament which as they are subject to greater variety of significations than most other words are so have they ever yet been and are like to be to the worlds end the matter and fuel of very many and very fiery contentions in the Church These three are Faith Grace and Spirit Truly I am perswaded if it were possible all men could agree in what signification each of these three words were to be understood in each place where any of them are found three full parts at least of the four of those unhappy Controversies that have been held up in the Christian Church would vanish And of the three this of the Spirit hath yet the greatest variety of significations God in his Essence the Person of the Holy Ghost good Angels evil Angels extraordinary Gifts wherewith the Apostles and others in the Primitive times were endowed the several faculties of the soul as understanding affections and conscience the whole soul of man Supernatural grace besides many others not needful now to be remembred all come under the appellation of Spirit