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	matter_n	soul_n	5,644	5	5.5092	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50972	Marcus Minucius Felix his Octavius, or, A vindication of Christianity against paganism translated by P. Lorrain.; Octavius. English. 1682	Minucius Felix, Marcus.; Lorrain, P. (Paul), d. 1719.	1682 (1682)	Wing M2201; ESTC R24390	46,854	150

are of a Middle substance between Mortal and Immortal that is between a Body and Spirit being made of a mixture of Terrestrial grosness and Celestial purity By which means they have an easie access to us to stir up our desires and by conveighing themselves into our hearts to affect our Senses raise our Passions and kindle in our Souls the flames of Lust These Daemons then who are mix'd and impure Spirits as we have plainly demonstrated by the Authority of Wisemen Philosophers and Plato himself lurk privately in those Statues and Images which are consecrated unto them and by their Enthusiasms get so great an Authority over the minds of men as of present Deities and this by inspiring their Prophets dwelling in their Temples by animating and acting the Entrails of Beasts by directing the flying of Birds determining of Lots and uttering Oracles which are generally obscure and mixt with abundance of lyes for they both deceive others and are deceiv'd themselves who as they do not know the Truth fully so they oft conceal and will not confess that which they do know because it tends to their own shame and confusion Thus they make it their business to depress and sink us downwards from Heaven to Earth and to estrange us from GOD by immersing us into Matter They trouble and disquiet our life molest us with Dreams and this by the advantage they have as Spirits to convey themselves into our Bodies where they counterfeit Diseases terrifie our Minds distort our Members thereby to oblige us to adore them and that after they are glutted with the reaking steam of Altars and the blood of slain Beasts by undoing their own Charms the honour of Healing might be attributed to them They are these very Spirits which act those raging mad folks whom you see running along the streets and who are every whit as much Prophets as those who give answers in your Temples for they both foame rage and are whirl'd about alike Indeed they are Daemons which possess the one as well as the other with this only difference that the object of their madness does vary From the same also proceed all those delusions you even now rehears'd as that of Jupiter's commanding in a Dream that his Games should be restor'd the appearance of Castor and Pollux on Horseback and that of a Ship being tow'd along by the girdle of a Roman Matron The most now adays and among them many of your own Party know very well that the Devils themselves do oft confess all these things when by the torture of our Words and the Fire of our Prayers they are driven out and dispossess'd Then it is that Saturn Serapis and Jupiter with all the Crew of Gods you worship being overcome with anguish do declare plainly what they are nor have they the power by lying to conceal their own shame as you may be sure they fain would though some of their deluded Adorers be present Sure you will credit the testimony of your own Gods when they witness the Truth against themselves and confess they are Devils For when those Wretches are conjur'd to come forth by the Name of the True and Only GOD they tremble and quake within the Bodies they have possess'd and either leap forth presently or vanish by degrees according as the Faith of the Patient and Grace of the Ghostly Physician are stronger or weaker So that they dread the nearness of those Christians whom at a distance by your means they trouble and disturb in their Assemblies and to that end insinuate themselves into the hearts of the simple and ignorant and there sow the seeds of hatred against our Religion For nothing is more natural than to hate those whom we dread and give all the trouble we can to those of whom we stand in awe So they prepossess and prejudice the hearts of men against us that they begin to hate us before they know us lest knowing us without this prejudice they might desire to imitate or at least not be able to condemn us Now how unjust it is to pass a Judgment upon things which one knows not as you do in condemning us you may take warning from us who do so heartily repent for having committed the same fault for we were once as you are and had the same Sentiments being involv'd in the same blindness and stupidity of Error when we believ'd that the Christans worship'd Monsters devour'd Children defil'd their Feasts with Incests without considering that though such things were commonly reported yet they never were prov'd and that none all this while has ever confess'd the least tittle of any one of these Crimes though besides the assurance of Pardon the ●eward of such a discovery might have been a great temptation thereunto ●ndeed to be a Christian is so far from ●mplying any thing that is evil or criminal that they who are convict ne●●her blush at it nor fear the punishment which attends it No you see them ●lory in it and troubled at nothing but ●hat they were so no sooner Never●heless we our selves at the same time when we undertook the Defence of Parricides and persons guilty of Sacriledges and Incest would not so much as hear the Plea that Christians were ready to make for themselves whom we sometimes made endure a cruel corture not out of hatred but pity forsooth that by constraining them through the greatness of torments to renounce their Religion we might save their lives Oh! perverse Inquisition to make use of the Rack not to force the sufferer to declare the Truth but to deny it Now if it so happened that any one less constant being overcome with the pains of those tortures did renounce his Religion he was received into favour as if by such an abjuration he had made atonement for all the Crimes which are commonly charg'd upon them By which you may plainly see that we formerly were of the same mind and persuasion with you doing the very same things as you do now But indeed had you been govern'd by Reason and not by the instigation of Evil Spirits your business would have been to have urg'd the Christians not to renounce their Religion but to confess their Incests Whoredoms impious Ceremonies and their Sacrificing of Infants which are the fabulous Stories wherewith the same Daemons have fill'd the silly people's Minds to make them detest and abhor us But no wonder if all these horrid lyes and Fictions do vanish away before the appearance of Truth which those Monsters so much oppose making it their business to spread and foment false reports From these also that Fable had its rise That we worship an Asse's Head But I pray you who can be conceiv'd so much a fool to worship such a thing or rather who is so much a fool as to believe we do it except those who are guilty of as extravagant and impious Devotions themselves For indeed it is you make both Asses and Stables Holy by having consecrated your Goddess

to establish those Religious Rites you have so horribly prophan'd and to worship those Gods who were once your Captives For to pay Adoration to that which you have taken in War is not so much a consecrating of Deities as an hallowing of Sacriledge Indeed all the Triumphs of the Romans were but so many horrid Impieties and all their Trophies so many Sacriledges It is not therefore the Religion of the Romans that has made them so great as the impunity of their Villanies For how can it be thought that those Gods should favour them in their Wars against whom they took Arms and which they did not worship till they had first led them in Triumph Besides what could those Gods do for the Romans who had not been able to do any thing against them either in defence of themselves or their people For as for their own Country-Gods they are well known what they were Romulus Picus Tiberinus Consus Pilumnus and Picunnus were all Worshipful Roman Gods And besides these Tatius was the first that made and worshipp'd Cloacina with reverence be it spoken for a Goddess Hostilius built Temples to Fear and Paleness and soon after I don't know who rear'd an Altar to the Goddess Ague In these Superstitions was Rome nurs'd up and taught to worship Diseases and Indispotions of health And those two prostitute Harlots Flora and Acca Laurentia whom they rank among their Divinities may very well be reckon'd also among their Maladies And yet these forsooth are the Gods that have enlarg'd the Roman Empire and vanquish'd the Gods of other Nations for it would be madness to suppose that Mars the God of Thracia Jupiter of Crete Juno the Goddess of Argos Samos and Carthage Diana of Ephesus and Scythia the Mother of the Gods and the Deities or rather Monsters of Egypt should ever help the Romans against their own people who for so many years had been their constant Worshippers But it may be they were willing to make this Change because at Rome the Priests are more Holy and the Sacred Virgins more Chast than any where else Very likely when for the most part those have suffer'd the punishment of Incest who committed it less cautiously whereas the rest escaped not by their being less criminal but by having better hap in the concealing of their lewdness And as for the Priests where do they play the Whore-masters more than in the Temples and before the Altars Here they exercise the function of Pimps and Panders and design and contrive Adulteries Neither does Lust and Debauchery abound so much in the publick Stews as in their Vestries and Cells But besides were there not other great Empires and States flourishing before these Superstitions were invented or so much as thought-of As the Assyrians Medes and Persians Grecians and Egyptians though they had no Pontifs nor that rabble of Arvales and Salii Vestals and Augurs nor no Chickens religiously penn'd up from whose feeding or refusing their Meat all measures were taken and the greatest Affairs of state determin'd But let 's come now to those Auguries and Divinations by the flight or chattering of Birds which the Romans so religiously observ'd and the neglect or contempt of which as you took notice has prov'd as fatal as the heeding of the same has been fortunate Was it because the most solemn dancing of the Barley peckt by the Chickens was not waited for that the Armies of Clodius Junius and Flaminius were defeated But what shall we say then of Regulus who religiously observ'd all these and yet was taken by the Enemy and so did Mancinus and for all that was forced to surrender himself upon dishonourable terms Paulus's Chickens fed heartily at the Battel of Cannae yet he perish'd and the greatest part of the Commonwealth with him And though Caesar made slight of the Auguries that forbad him to go into Africa before Winter yet had he a successful Voyage and return'd Conqueror so that his contempt of these fopperies did but seem to favour his Passage and Victory Now as to the Oracles how many things might not I have to say concerning them Amphiaraus after his death foretells future events to others who when alive could not foresee the treachery of his Wife against him for a Bracelet of Gold Tiresias the blindman prophesies things to come and yet is not aware of what is present Ennius in behalf of Pyrrhus counterfeits the Answers of Apollo seeing he was become speechless whose wary and ambiguous Oracle was silenc'd as soon as Men began to be more wise and less credulous Thus Demosthenes was not afraid to accuse the She-Priests of Apollo of giving such answers as Philip would have her being well acquainted with those Holy jugglings But what Will you then deny that Oracles and Auguries ever hit the truth Well suppose we grant it Pray what will it avail to the Credit of Oracles if among so many lies one true word has at a venture been delivered or that Chance has sometimes imitated Design But give me leave to go back to the Spring from whence these Errors flow and discover the Deep from which such gross darknesses do issue forth There are certain impure and vagrant Spirits who being loaden with Earthly pollutions and desires have sunk themselves down to this lower Orbe from their Original Station and those miserable wretches having thus lost the Natural advantages wherewith they were created and having given up themselves to all manner of Vices they endeavour to comfort themselves under this calamity by bringing others into the same misery for as they have corrupted themselves so do they delight in nothing more than to corrupt others and as they have separated themselves from GOD so do they their utmost endeavours by false ways Religions and Superstition to keep Mankind estranged from Him These Spirits the Poets acknowledge to be Daemons concerning whose Nature the Philosophers maintain several Disputes and they were very well known to Socrates who had one of them always attending him according to whose intimations he either undertook or declin'd all business The Magicians also are very well acquainted with this sort of Spirits by whose help they do all those strange Feats and Juggling tricks by which they make us believe we see that which is not or not to see that which really is and in a word atchieve to our great amazement all those extraordinary and astonishing Wonders that are spoken of Nevertheless Hostanes who was the Chiefest of all these Magicians both in word and deed gives GOD the Honour due to Him and says that the Angels are his Ministers and Messengers who adore Him with fear and trembling To which he adds that the Daemons are Earthly and Vagabond Spirits that hate Mankind And Plato who found it a hard matter to know GOD did not find it so to know them He speaks both of Daemons and Angels and in his Dialogue call'd the BANQVET he endeavours to explain the Nature of the former saying That they