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	holy_a	son_n	13,852	5	5.7878	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B06714	The Athenian Society unvaild: or, Their ignorance and envious abusing of the Quakers detected and reprehended	Wyeth, Joseph, 1663-1731.; Whitehead, John, 1630-1696.	1692 (1692)	Wing W3760; ESTC R186898	9,433	4

to be the detestable Opinions which we hold and indeed do not nor never did Decemb. 22. 1691. By one who is in Scorn called a QUAKER By this it appears that its end is either that you would prove your Assertions or retract them but instead of doing either in that which you call your Answer you have only shewn a little more ill Nature and a great deal of Impertinency in running so very wide from the Mark as you have done by making your foolish and false Harangues without proving any thing and all this with a design to use your own words to preserve those of your Communion by shewing them what Principles you say we really hold But if you have no better Preservatives than these palpable Lies you need not wonder that People coming to the Knowledg of that self evident Principle of the Light Grace or Spirit of God in their own Hearts do then leave you and your refuge And here I must observe that to evade the proving your Charges and to prevent any closer Answer you endeavour to amuse the Reader and frighten us by asking 10 Questions if at least they all deserve that Name in which you think there is so much Acumen that they touch us to the quick and all these to be answered Catagorically or else the worst is to be taken pro Confesso Now to Questions on which so great stress is laid the Reader will very naturally suppose they ought to be very pertinent and very weighty but I must inform him that in this present case it 's far otherwise as will appear plain enough by repeating them and which are as follows 1. Whether they all generally own the Scriptures to be the Word of God 2. Whether they own Jesus Christ to have been God equal with the Father from all Eternity 3. Whether they own the Holy Spirit to be God and that in the Holy Trinity there are three Persons and one God blessed for evermore 4. Whether they hold their boasted Light within to be this very third Person or only their own natural Reason 5. Whether they partake of either of the Sacraments in their Congregations or whether they do not absolutely neglect both Baptism and the Supper of the Lord 6. Whether they believe Angels or any Immaterial Spirits besides the Soul of Man 7. Whether they believe the Existence of the Soul after Death and Resurrection of the Body and Reunion of the Soul thereunto at the day of Judgment Now the terrible ones 8. Who was your first Founder 9. Did they Quake and Tremble or no when they first came into England and the reason thereof 10. Where may we find their Creed or an Act of their Religion And whether it is not altered in several particulars since their Rise tho' but of so few Years standing These are what you vainly and falsly set to measure Christianity by but they cannot do it because some of them are Antiscriptural which yet you call your Rule and others so ridiculous that they could not be asked by a Man truly Christian so that if I should not refer you to any Answer to these for you would not have it now done de Novo but by the Testimony of our Authentick Writers your mighty Threaten would signifie nothing for it remains for you to prove your Assertions they being denyed by us and tho' at pleasure you throw by your own Rules yet you must not pretend to do so by the continual Rules of Debate and Discourse But the trouble hereof being as small as your expectation can be great I shall for this once do it when I have first acquainted you That tho' you pretend to be more Athenian than the Senate of the Nation yet it will hardly become you to pretend to be more Christian than it And if so then since Malice or some such Humour has spoiled your Memory I will take leave to acquaint you that in an Act made 1689. Entituled An Act for exempting their Majesties Protestant Subjects c. there is something which upon the Authority of Holy Writ as well as their own is call'd a Christian Belief and was made on purpose for us call'd Quakers as by the Act appears and is as follows I A. B. Profess Faith in God the Father and Jesus Christ his Eternal Son the true God and in the Holy Spirit one God blessed for evermore and do acknowledg the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration This having been at all times as it now is our hearty Belief you might have spared your three first Queries which are not so Scriptural To your fourth query read Geo. Keith of Immediate Revelation not Ceased To your sixth and seventh read Sam. Fisher in a Treatise Entituled Some certain hidden Spiritual Verities revealed And likewise for Answer to many of them you may read The Christian Quaker written by Geo. Whitehead and Will. Penn And lastly both to these and the rest read Rob. Barclay in his Apology for the true Christian Divinity in which you will find a distinct Account of our Principles and that they are consonant to Holy Writ right Reason and pure Antiquity for which reason it is that our Principles are not chang'd nor indeed can be they being preserv'd by the Spirit of God in us with which there is no Variableness nor Shadow of turning And many more would I be prolix I could number up but here being enough and more than is needful in this occasion I shall stop Now in these cited Authentick Writings you may find as I have said not only more than enough to Answer your Queries but also the Truths therein contained so clearly delivered that were ye honest enough to confess it you would say there is much less of the Jesuit in them than there appears to be of their Nature in you as is evident by your gross Lies and Abuses which that I may not forget and you run from by that Evasion which you pretended to fear in us I shall here put you in mind That whatsoever you shall say hereafter cannot be look'd upon to have any Weight unless you either prove or retract these your bold Affirmo's which are hereby returned upon you as your Lies viz. You affirm 1. That the Quakers rest on their own Merits 2. That they deny Heaven Hell Angels and Spirits 3. That they believe the Soul to sleep in the Grave until the Resurrection 4. That they deny the Divinity and Humanity of Christ 5. That they deny the Scriptures to be the Word of God or given by Divine Inspiration And 6. that Fanaticism Enthusiasm and Infidelity do make up the Quaker's Creed If you pretend to prove them it is expected that you do it from our Selves or our own Writings but if you cannot let it hereby appear how fairly you have merited the Title of Incendiaries which yet you 're loath to own but it being your due you must be so accounted in that you 're

Complex of your Lies and Slanders freed from the profound Nonsense and palpable Ignorance wherewith you have formally interlarded each of the above cited places but of each I shall give an Instance First in the 23. N. q. 4. where you say But if there be any of 'em who have left their first Principles and are degenerated into Christianity What! think you Christianity to be worse than our Principles For Degeneracy is I think to go from better to worse or if this be to Frolick with Words it 's a very odd way of doing it Of your palpable Ignorance let this be an Instance where in N. 30. q. 1. you ask How they have the Face to pretend to what they never had Christianity when they were never Christen'd Now if by Christning you mean Sprinkling a Face with Water I am sure it is contradictory to that of the Apostle who signifies That true and saving Christianity consists in having the Conscience sprinkled from dead Works to serve the Living God Which cannot be purged by any such external Operation but only and alone by the Spirit of God in Man By this time I suppose it will be thought sufficiently reasonable that we clear our selves or that you should prove these your Assertions which that you might do the last was the occasion o th' Letter which in that you call your Answer in V. 5. N. 29. and which I shall consider anon you call an angry one and not agreeable to the Precept of Turning the other Cheek to which I must tell you that it is sufficiently known to have been our constant Practice to bear the Smitings the Buffetings the Wastings and the Plunderings which Men of your Spirit and Temper have inflicted upon us under the pretext of Laws whilst in use Under all which Sufferings God did by the Sheddings forth of his Spirit so comfort our Spirits that we can say in Truth we took joyfully the Spoil of our Goods and Imprisonment of our Bodies for his Name sake and can also forgive them that did it only desiring for the worst of them as for you That you may come to see the Evil you have done by these your Lies and Scandals and turn from them by a sincere and hearty Repentance that so your Sins may be forgiven when the times of refreshing shall come from the Lord's Presence But notwithstanding all this should we be silent to these your Lies it might be construed a joyning with you against that Holy Truth of which we are Professors which we cannot do but must herein clear it from your Calumnies And the Jews might have told John the Baptist he was angry when he calls them a Generation of Vipers The like they might have told Holy Stephen when in Act. 7.51 52. he calls them Vncircumcised in Hearts and Ears Resisters of the Holy Ghost Persecutors of the Prophets Betrayers and Murtherers of the Just One. They both speak Truth and its warmness was justified by its occasion And now to shew that the warmness of this Letter bears no proportion to the occasion you have given and that I have not requited you with Vineger for your Gall I shall here give the Copy thereof but without your frothy and abusive Parentheses Which is as follows The Copy of the Letter I sent them Athenians AT and since your appearing in the World by this Name your repeated Protestations of Christian Candor and Modesty in answering such Questions as were fit to be answered and total Silence in such as were not did make the Ingenuous of either Sex however distinguish'd willing to further what might be of Service to the Publick But your notorious Prevarications have sufficiently shewn that what was intended for your Encouragement and others Service you have only made use of as a Ladder to climb higher than others whereby you might have the hateful opportunity of abusing what and whomsoever agrees not with you and that by Aspersions so palpably gross and false that it needs not the Judgment of an Athenian to Vnvail you The present Ease and Felicity which we called Quakers do with others find under the happy Influence of a mild and generous Government which Happiness we do with all Duty and Gratitude thankfully acknowledg and remember has so far buried the late Distractions Waste and Plunderings that they are hardly now to be met with but in History And that this Peace and this Felicity might be perpetual the Wisdom of the Nation has been so Latitudinarian to use your disdainful Expression that among other Things in an Act for that very purpose made they have framed what they there Call and what truly is a Christian Profession or Confession the Owners and Subscribers of which as they are the King and Queens Lieg-Subjects so they are Christians in Belief notwithstanding all your Buffoonry and wilful Lies I shall only at present enumerate the Heads of your several Scandals and Abuses which in your Preface to the 3. Volume you say you took so much Pleasure in Composing The first is Vol. 3. N. 8. q. 6. where you tax the paying of Obedience to a positive Command of Christ with Enthusiasm but this being Language too kind you do with the next opportunity in N. 23. q. 4. of the same Volume assert upon your own Knowledg our believing a number of portentous and monstrous Opinions you there number up and which here we do utterly deny and ever did declaring such your Assertion to be False Scandalous and Malitious hereby requiring you to make your Assertions good or to be accounted what you truly are that is the worst of Incendiaries which Title to convince the World does peculiarly belong to you you have in another of your Mercuries Vol. 4. N. 30. q. 1. pretended to draw a Parallel between Quaker and Papist but with such known Falshood that there is now hardly any Person who pretends to much less Reading than your witty selves but knows it to be no other than a Malitious Lye which plainly shews that notwithstanding the noisy Offers which you in your Mercuries make at a Reformation your selves have not advanced the first Step towards it And in the last-mentioned Question where you pretend to consider them asunder you have done it so unlearnedly as well as falsly that perhaps it needs not the strength of a Champion to foil you who have fallen from the forms of Civility as well as Christanity in that you have falsly belyed and accused your Neighbours You are not to suppose that this comes in the manner of a Question which you may not think fit to Answer for it is hereby declared That if you do not within some reasonable time give the World clear Proofs of your Assertions in the Places and Answers above-noted you shall be exposed and your Falshood and Baseness detected not only by the Verbatim hereof in Print but by a more particular Answer to each of your many Lies I call them by this Name which you affirm