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spirit_n call_v ghost_n holy_a 25,488 5 5.6892 4 true
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A44535 The honesty of the Protestant and dishonesty of the popish divinity in a letter to a lady revolted to the Church of Rome / by Anthony Horneck. Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697. 1681 (1681) Wing H2844; ESTC R28116 32,752 156

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prescribe the way how God is to be worshipped but God himself And if God requires you to address yourself to him without any other Mediator but Christ Jesus Have not you just reason to be afraid that God will reject your Prayers which are addiressed to Saints as Mediators contrary to his order and injunction What Kings suffer here on Earth in letting their Subjects address themselves by their Servants to them can be no example here for God as he intends not to regulate his Court by the Court of Princes so we know it is against his Order to go to his Servants when we are commanded to come directly to him and it is such a voluntary humility as deprives us of our reward as the Apostles expresly tells us Coloss. 2. 18. God knew well enough if men addressed themselves to his Servants to have access to him something of the Worship due to him would stick by the way and rest upon his Servants to his dishonour and disparagement and therefore he mentioned nothing of this mediate address It s true we desire our neighbours here on Earth to pray for us but for that we have a command for the invocation of Saints departed we have none and in vain do they worship me saith God teaching for doctrines the Commandements of men Mat. 15. 9. But besides when you desire your living Neighbours to pray for you I hope you do not fall down upon your knees to them nor use the same zeal and devotion to them as you do to God and for whole hours together as you do to Saints departed But why will you blind your self in a thing which your own practice contradicts you in you know you do not onely pray to Saints departed to pray for you but you do many times without making any mention of their Prayers for you beg of them with the same reverence and prostrations you use to God to deliver you from all evil and consequently you beg the same Blessings of them you beg of God And it is but a weak excuse to say that you intend by those Prayers nothing else but that by their intercession they may get those blessings for you for you go contrary to the nature of things and whereas words ordinarily are interpreters of the mind you make your minds interpreters of your words and actions which is a strange evasion and if such a thing be intended why do you lay a snare before the Common sort of People who being ordered to pray to Saints for such and such blessings know nothing to the contrary but that they are able to dispense those Blessings to them and thus commit Idollatry by your willful connivance whose blood will certainly be required at your Churchmens hands one day Examine but your Prayers to the Virgin Mary in your own Manuals when you have prayed to her and begged of her all that you can pray of GOD you add a word or two of her intercession which in good truth is nothing but a blind that you may not be said to commit down right Idolatry You know those Prayers to the Virgin Mary which in the Latine and I think in the English Manual too are ordered to be said to the Virgin Morning and Evening the one O my Lady Holy Mary I commend my self my Soul and Body to thy blessed care and singular custody and to the bosome of thy mercy this day and every day and in the hour of my going out of the World All my hope and all my comfort all my afflictions and miseries my life my end I commit unto thee speak seriously what can you say more to GOD that by thy most holy Intercession and by thy merits all my words and actions may be directed and disposed according to thine and thy Sons Will Amen Where it 's worth noting that first you do put as much trust in the Virgin as you do in GOD and then afterwards to make these harsh expressions softer you desire her to interceed for you that your works may be directed according to Christs Will nay and her own as if she were a Law giver too Then follows Maria Mater Gratiae c. O Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy Protect us from the Enemy and receive us in the hour of Death which St. Stephen thought was fitter to be said to Christ when he Cryed Lord Jesu receive my Spirit Then followes the Evening Prayer to the Virgin Mary O Mary Mother of GOD and gratious Virgin the true Comforter of all distressed Creatures that call upon thee this Epithete by the way the Scripture gives to the Holy Ghost by that great joy whereby thou wast comforted when thou didst know that Jesus Christ was risen the third day from the Dead impassible be thou the Comforter of my Soul and by the same who is thine and GODS only Son in the last day when with body and Soul I shall rise again and give an account of all my actions do thou Vouchsafe to help me that I may escape the Sentence of perpetual Damnation by thee Pious Mother and Virgin and may come happily with all the Elect of GOD to Eternal joyes Amen Then follows vnder thy protection we flee Holy Mother of GOD despise not our prayer in our necessities but deliver us from all dangers alwayes O glorious and blessed Virgln Not to mention any more prayers of this nature whereof there is a vast number If GOD be a GOD jealous of his Glory how can he like and approve of such doings It 's true the Honour done to his Servants is done to him but then it must be such Honour as they are capable to receive so to Honour them as to give them the Epithetes and titles which the Scripture gives to none but GOD so to Honour them as to use in your prayers to them the same outward prostrations that you use to GOD when you pray to him so to Honour them as to spend more time in your addresses to them than you do in supplications to GOD as is evident from your Rosary so to Honour them as to say more prayers to them than to Christ so to Honour them as to joyn their merits with Christs merits This is an Honour which I believe will oblige GOD to say one day who hath required these things at your hands And how unlike the Worship of the true GOD is that Veneration you express to the Images and Pictures of Saints and to Relicks How unlike that plain and Simple Worship which the Gospel enjoynes One would think it should a little startle you to see that your Church is afraid to let the second Commandement be known to the people you know they leave it out in their Primmers and Catechismes or if they mention it they do so mince it that one sees plainly they are afraid the People should see the contrariety of the●r Worship to the express word of GOD. In the beginning of the Reformation the very sight of this Commandement made