Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	call_v	church_n	holy_a	7,200	5	5.2401	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43659	The judgment of an anonymous writer concerning ... I. a law for disabling a papist to inherit the crown, II. the execution of penal laws against Protestant dissenters, III. a bill of comprehension : all briefly discussed in a letter sent from beyond the seas to a dissenter ten years ago.	Hickes, George, 1642-1715.; L'Estrange, Roger, Sir, 1616-1704.	1684 (1684)	Wing H1854; ESTC R5996	17,943	35

her days are like to be but few and evil and except God encline the Hearts of our Magistrates to put the Laws in Execution against them and find some effectual means to reduce you you may live to see her Ruin accomplished which you both alike desire and expect How numerous you are the World can guess and if the Accounts which we receive from the Fathers of Intelligence of several Orders be credible there are about three Thousand of them which find Entertainment and Success within the King of Great Britain's Dominions But in the mean time till her hour is come she struggleth against both like her Saviour against the Pharisees whose true Disciples in part you both are they representing those sworn Enemies of the Gospel by the Cabala of their ridiculous and impious Traditions and you representing them in their Hypocrisie Pride Envy Evil speaking moross and censorious Dispositions c. which are Sins scarce consistent with Humanity much less with Grace as likewise in observing many Fasts and making long Prayers with design not to serve God but to delude the People And therefore I wonder not that you are such malignant Enemies to the Church of England since that Pharisaical spirit which reigneth so much amongst you is a wicked Pusilanimous spirit that affects to be seen in the Head of Parties and Dictate amongst the Ignorant and loves as much to Rule as it hates to Obey But would you once be so sincere as to subdue your Pride lay aside your Prejudice inform your Ignorance and forsake your dearly beloved Interest for the Truth it would not be long ere we should see you joyn with the Church of England without troubling our Senators to bring you in with an Act of incomprehensible Comprehension Your Pride appeareth in Heading of Parties and in the Pleasure you are seen to take in the Multitudes that run after you and in your boasting that without you the Souls of People would starve for want of Knowledg Your Prejudice is an effect of your Pride and discovers it self together with your Ignorance in not submitting to those Invincible Reasons which you cannot Answer And as for your Interest the greatest Paradox of all that is evident enough to me who have so often heard many of you glorifie your selves in the Number and Riches of your Followers boast of their Affection to your sacred Persons and brag of the great Sums you have Collected in your Congregations which makes the King's Chapples as you arrogantly call your Conventicles better places than most of the Churches of which He is Patron And therefore never complain that you live either worse or at greater uncertainties than you did before For by your Pretentions to Poverty and Sufferings and by other unworthy Arts you have so wrought your selves into the esteem of your Disciples that few of them are either so Covetuous or so Poor but they will Pinch at home to supply you There are several orders of Fransciscans here who have renounced not only Parsonages but all Temporal Estates and Possessions whatsoever and by their vain Glorious Sanctity and Austerities they have got like you such fast hold on the Souls of the People which is the fastest hold of all that they can easily make most of them dispose of their Children cashire their Servants and settle their Estates as they please and by these Tricks do more effectually promote the Interest of Rome than all the Parish Priests within the Pale of that Church And really when I consider what Influence these Sanctimonious and self-denying Zealots have o're all Families in all places where they live how they Steal away the Hearts of the People from their Parish-Priests and drain their Congregations and how the deluded People had rather give them the worth of a shilling than the dues of two pence to their own Curees it makes me often run the Parallel between you and them and think what a Politick and Gainful Pretence you have got to renounce your Livings for to secure your Consciences and to preach the Word gratis like the Primitive Apostles when God knows 't is not out of love to the People but to your selves And I protest to you were I a man to be maintained by the Pulpit and consulted my Profit more than the Goodness of my Cause I should take the same courses that you do I should rather be Mr. M. than Dr. A. of Plymouth and should chuse the plentiful Income of that dull Zealot Dr. Manton before that of his most Learned and Religious Successor of Govent-Garden But though you live very well and better indeed than most of the Ministers of the Church yet the Mischief of it is you are uncapable of Dignities which makes you such Aerians and upon all occasions openeth your Throats as wide as Sepulchres against the Bishops and the Church You know what an History of Bishops Mr. Pryn hath wrote and what a fair Collection the Learned Smec hath taken out of him as if when a Bishop is defective either in Piety Learning or the Skill of Government it were not the deplorable unhappiness but the fault of the Church of England Should an Heathen or Mahumetan make such an Historical Collection of Scandalous Christians either in this or former Ages you would not be perswaded for all that to prefer the Alcoran before the Gospel or the most exalted Paganism whatsoever before the Christian Religion Therefore wise and sober men will make no Inference but this from such a malicious enumeration of Particulars that corruptions will creep into Government notwithstanding all the care that can be used to the contrary and that by the favour of Princes who hear with other mens ears and often receive undeserved Characters of Men sometimes Ambitious sometimes Ignorant and sometimes Slothful Imprudent or Debauched Persons will be Preferred to the most Honourable Dignities in the Church But this as often as it happens is the misery of the Church of England which all true Church men lament though the men of the short Cloke take all such occasions to expose her to the scorn of the common people who judge by Sense and not by Reason and who are taught by you to make no distinction between the Bishops and the Church But were all her Bishops the best Christians the best Scholars and the best Governours in the World and should the Royal Hand place her Mytres on the Heads of none but Iewels Whitgift's Andrews's Hall's Usher's Morton's Taylor 's and Sanderson's yet that Unchristian Spirit of Envy and Discontent which informs the Non conformists would still fly upon her with open Mouth like Beasts upon the Saints of old condemned to the amphitheater and make her as she hath already been for almost forty years a Spectacle to God to Angels and to Men. The wicked Lives of Scandalous Bishops and Priests if there be any such are her sad Misfortune but cannot justifie the Schism you are guilty of who are bound to hear even them as much as the Iews were bound to hear the Scribes and Pharisees those Hypocrites that sate in Moses's Chair And in that deplorable state of the Iewish Church when the Priests and Prophets were both alike corrupted and called by the Holy Spirit Dumb and greedy Dogs yet it had been unlawful to make a separation and set up other Altars against that which God who was their King had set up I cannot but mind you of the Sehism of Ieroboam who by dividing the Church as God was pleased to divide the Kingdom into two parts made Israel to sin But to insist on the Samaritan Secession and write all that is necessary to discover and aggravate the damnable Nature of Schism would require as much more Paper as I have bestowed and so make me as tedious again as I fear I have already been Besides it would oblige me to answer Mr. Hales's Treatise of Schism with whose Leaves you vainly endeavour to cover your shame And I had indeed a year ago undertaken that easie Task but that a Western Gentleman to whom I discovered my Intentions told me That Mr. Long Prebendary of Exeter a Friend of his had already begun that good Work so that I hope it is printed by this time And if either that or this or any thing else a thousand times better than I am able to write may prove effectual to reclaim you from Schism I shall be as glad as to see some other of our Friends reformed from Drunkenness Swearing and Uncleanness which are very grievous and dreadful Sins but yet not more damnable in their Nature nor more distructive to the Christian Religion nor more deeply rooted in the Soul of man than that of Schism From which I pray God by the Power of his Grace to Preserve me and Reform you through Iesus Christ our Lord to whose Protection I commit you and rest Your most Affectionate Cousin And humble Servant Saumur May 7. 1674. FINIS ADVERTISEMENT THere is lately Published a Book Entituled The Royal Apology or an Answer to the Rebels Plea Wherein the most Noted Anti-Monarchical Tenents First Published by Doleman the Iesuite to promote a Bill of Exclusion against King IAMES Secondly Practised by Bradshaw and the Regicides in the actual Murder of King CHARLES the 1st Thirdly Republished by Sidney and the Associators to Depose and Murder his Present MAIESTY are distinctly considered With a Parallel between Doleman Bradshaw Sidney and other of the True Protestant Party London Printed by T. B. for Robert Clavel and are to be sold by Randolph Taylor near Stationers-Hall 1684. Price 1 s.

bury their dead in Catholick Churches or Church-yards even where the deceased Person was Patron of the Church or where his Ancestors had purchased Burying-places for their Families Though they are forbid to make any Publick Exhortations or Prayer or to sing Psalms at their Burial Though they are forbid to Instruct or Condole those of their own Religion in Prisons or Hospitals or to pray with them in a voice so loud as to be heard by the standers by tho' they are forbid to make any Collections of Money among themselves but such as are permitted and regulated by the Edicts of the King Though they are forbid to Work or open their Shops on Romish Holy-days or to sell Flesh on their Fasting-days c. I say the good Protestants here in France notwithstanding all this hard dealing are yet so far from complaining of Persecution that they shew themselves thankful both to God and the King for the Liberty and Indulgence they enjoy Indeed they will complain for the aforesaid Reasons that their Religion is very much discouraged and they themselves hardly used But Persecution is a Notion that they rarely think or speak of when they discourse of their own condition being very far though not so far as you from a State of Martyrdom which consists in a forcible Obligation to Suffer or Renounce the Truth And therefore Cousin I beseech you and conjure you not to misuse the Name of Persecution again It is a very sinful way thus to abuse and amuse the Vulgar by calling things by their wrong Names and as to this particular honest and knowing men will be apt to suspect that through the Name of Persecution you have a design to make your Governours pass for Tyrants and your selves for Martyrs To conclude If this which you call Persecution be not such indeed then I doubt not but they who Miscal it so that is all presumptuous or affectedly ignorant Schismaticks without bitter pangs of Repentance will be persecuted by the God of Peace himself to a sad and endless eternity As for the Bill of Comprehension it begun to be talked of before I left my Country and I have often discours'd it with many of the Projectors but could never understand from them how it was practicable to unite so many Incompossible Sects which agree in nothing but their opposition to the Church However if the altering or taking away of a Ceremony or two would effectually unite the Protestant Partys as you are pleased to assert I think it would be worth the while to do it and that the doing of it for so sure an end would reflect no dishonour upon the Church of England which acknowledgeth the few innocent and decent Ceremonies which she hath ordained to be indifferent and alterable according to the Exigency of times Neither if this were done could the Romish Church have the least apparent reason to reproach us for such a slight alteration seeing her own Missals and Breviaries have been so diverse and different in several times and places and have undergone so many Emendations or rather Corruptions before they were established in the present Form by the Authority of Pius V. and the Decree of the Council of Trent But unless this Alteration would surely and infallibly produce this effect it had far better be let alone and in the mean time I would have all good Christians wait in Peace and Complyance with the Established Religion till Authority shall think to make this Alteration in it that so a poor English Traveller would not be tauntingly asked by every impertinent Priest here Whether he were a true Son of the Church or Presbyterian or Independant or Anabaptist or Quaker And I assure you when they meet with a man that owns himself a true Son of the Church of England they will seem with great Formality to pity him more than any other but yet they will never attempt to convert him But when they meet with one that will own himself of any other sort they will be pleased smile in their Sleeves and set upon him as a Person not far from their Kingdom of God And I am perswaded had you seen or heard as much of their Idolatries Blasphemies and Superstitions as I have done in one Christmas one Lent and one Easter you would be so far from doing the Church of England any ill Office that you would rather like St. Paul after his Conversion preach against your own Partizans and thank God that you lived in a Church reformed from Romish Idolatry and Superstition And I cannot but freely confess that I am since my Travels become ten Times a greater Lover of our own Church and as many times a greater Hater and Detester of the Romish Church than I was before And therefore I cannot here dissemble the hearty Grief I have conceived for the great hopes you have that the Licenses as you express it will be once more authorized by his Majesty or the Declaration revived For as it is that which at first was hammered out by a Popish Lord who was the Patron and Idol of the Presbyterians so 't is that which the Roman Catholicks here especially the Priests do hope and wish for as well as you They desire nothing more than such a Toleration as that was knowing that it must needs tend to the Ruine of the Church of England which is the principal Butt of all their Envy and Malice as being the main support and credit of the Reformed Religion every where and the only hedg against Popery it self in our unfortunate British Isles We meet with not a few Priests of several Orders that have the confidence in our most familiar conferences to tell us that by the just Judgment of God upon our Church the time of Her Ruin is at Hand the Nation it self being over-spread with Schism and Atheism and the Hearts of the Faithful being disposed by the Spirit and Providence of God to re-embrace the Holy Catholick Truth And therefore they freely Confess that this time of Distraction is their Harvest and withal express their Intentions and Zeal to Transport themselves into England at the Critical time of Toleration that they may be Fellow-laborers with your selves in that Harvest They seem to lament as much and complain as fast of the prodigious increase of Schism and Atheism among us as you are wont to do of the daily growth of Atheism and Popery And whilst you both complain alike and in the formality of your complaints both alike reflect upon the Church of England It is she only that is the sufferer and she only that truly laments the growth and at the same time sets up Banks to hinder the perfect Inundation of all the three among us As for Schism among Protestants you were the first Fathers and continue the chief Fautors thereof all the inferior Sects having sprung from you and dividing both from you and one another under pretence of the same Reasons for which you profess to divide