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	word_n	11,397	5	4.1800	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34429	An exhortation to firmness and constancy in true religion in a sermon preached at St. Mary Islington, Feb. 2, 1689/90 / by Shadrach Cooke ...	Cooke, Shadrach, 1655?-1724?	1689 (1689)	Wing C6037; ESTC R20683	19,785	32

Now as God saith by the Prophet concerning good Men They shall be mine saith the Lord in that Day when I make up my Jewels So contrariwise may be here said or intended of these Christ at that great Day shall utterly disown them and cast them from his Presence for ever as is still Secondly further implied and signified by the time here expressed for his so doing When he cometh in the Glory of his Father c. At that great and solemn Day which is the final Consummation of all things after which there is nothing to be done no more Accounts to be made then shall he pass on them an irrevocable Sentence of Condemnation And is not this a most severe and affrightful Case that forebodes and threatens an eternal Banishment from the Divine Love and Favour and the procuring of God's utter Hatred and Displeasure of which there can be no repeal or recovery To be thus rejected and abandoned by Christ our Lord who hath shed his Blood for our Redemption and has laid on us the strictest Obligations imaginable to own and obey him is a most heightning consideration of Misery and Condemnation To see at that great Day of Accounts the gracious Saviour of the World thus utterly to reject and cast off those for whom he shed his Blood and instead of Reward or Redemption to pass a dismal Sentence of Punishment against them is a cutting consideration even now to think of What will it be to experience another Day Considering in the Second Place That this will be done after the most disgraceful Sort or Manner Of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed Nec Lex est justior ulla For it both represents the Equity of the Divine Proceedings together with the sharpness of the Punishment as they have been ashamed of him so will he be of them he will reject and disown them in the most Vile and Contemptious manner he will be even ashamed to look upon them and will cast them from him with Scorn and Confusion Now there is nothing that doth generally more affect human Nature than to be treated with Contempt to a good and generous Spirit it is most cutting and intollerable And you can't but observe from daily Experience that nothing goes so deep or afflicts so much as to be slighted and contemn'd From whence we may make a guess of the great Punishment of all such Souls as shall be thus treated by Christ at that Day There is even to common Malefactors a kind of secret Pity and Commiseration though Suffering for very Notorious Crimes and Villainies but those Men are prodigiously Guilty and Miserable that fall with universal Scorn and Derision Yet such and much worse is the Punishment here threatned Of them shall Christ be ashamed However others may fare these shall suffer Shameful and Unpitied or one great Punishment to be inflicted on them is Shame or Contempt And you know among Men That 't is a great heightning and sometimes indeed the utmost Aggravation of a Suffering to have the Ingredient or Circumstance of Shame or Scandal And what now shall we think of these at that great Day when whatever is really Shameful and Scandalous shall be the Lot and Portion of such Sinners For Thirdly All this shall be at the most solemn Time and son Of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the Glory of his Father with the holy Angels Shame or Contempt is a relative Evil that which doth properly depend on the view or apprehension of others which is more and more heightned or improved that is rendered still the worse to bear the more and greater the Objects we are thus exposed to and therefore how great and intollerable is this most Shameful Punishment like to be that is executed or inflicted after such a Serious and Solemn manner bearing in it whatever may render it Affrightful and Terrible Of him shall the Son of Man c. that is Christ who was God and Man this great God shall then be ashamed of him And as if this were not enough to superadd hereunto it is Aggravated from the Time Company or Circumstances here mentioned When he shall come in the Glory of his Father with the holy Angels Every Word bears in it a most cutting Consideration This shall be their Lot and Portion from him when he shall appear in his infinitely glorious Godhead after the most Solemn and Triumphant manner and comes with Millions of Angels to call all the World to Judgment before infinite Multitudes of such Pure and Holy Spirits and before all the World he shall pass such a dismal Punishment upon them As if he should say Men have very great reason to be careful against this Evil considering that such a present denial or being ashamed of Christ shall be thus repayed hereafter They that disown him now before Men in an Adulterous and Sinful Generation shall be shamefully rejected by him before the holy Angels He that will be invested with infinite Glory and Majesty will for This be then ashamed of them in the presence of these Pure and Immaculate Beings And the consideration of these Solemn Circumstances is a most dismal Aggravation of that future Condemnation and Punishment reserved for them against the great Day of Judgment Considering in the Fourth Place That this is in Mens greatest Streights and Necessities Of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh in the Glory of his Father with the holy Angels a time of the greatest distress and danger For the future Day of Accounts or Judgment whereof this is such a lively Representation will be the Season when we shall stand in most need of God and Christ our Redeemer Then to have a share and interest in Heaven and to have favour with the great Judge of the World will be our greatest and indeed our only Comfort Nothing will then stand us in stead or avail us but such a happy Provision as this But oh how miserable now must the contrary case of such Men be who have provoked him to the highest degree and rendered him their utter and implacable Enemy To be conscious to our selves that we have done all we could to Affront and Abuse our Lord and Saviour as is too much the Case of these Sinners must strike the deepest Melancholy to our Souls Then when we have most need of Comfort we shall have the the least of it and instead of Acceptance with God have a Shameful and Bitter Sentence from him So that what Solomon saith Prov. 1.24 may be fitly applied to the Case before us Because I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no Man regarded but ye have set at nought all my counsel and would none of my Reproof I also will laugh at your Calamity I will mock when your Fear cometh when your fear cometh as desolation and destruction cometh as a Whirl-wind when distress and anguish cometh upon you Then shall they

greatest he could use And which he hoped might prevail even upon our Saviour himself For he sheweth him all the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them And saith unto him all these Things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me Now what could not prevail upon him is God knows too powerful with many of us who either through the Ambition of our Spirits or the Necessity of Nature are by our secular Interest too often carried beyond the bounds of our Duties and hereby made complyant to Unjust and Dishonourable Practices And may not the Apostle seem to have reference to the worst Consequences this way in the 2 Pet. 2. There shall be false Preachers amongst you who privily shall bring in damnable Heresies And through Covetousness shall they with feigned Words make Merchandise of you But now we may the less wonder at that unhappy influence which this Vice hath over Faith and a good Conscience when we remember that Covetousness or the Love of Secular Gain and Interest did make Christ's own Disciple shamefully forsake him and basely betray him to his most Malicious Persecutors and Murtherers One of the Twelve called Judas Iscariot went unto the Chief Priest and said unto them What will ye give me and I will deliver him unto you and they covenanted with him for Thirty pieces of Silver Matth. 26.15 And if the value of about Three Pound Fifteen Shillings could prompt a Disciple to this horrid Treachery we may be apt to suspect at least that a more additional Temptation this way may have too much prevalency upon mean and sordid Spirits Wherefore Love not the World neither the things that are in the World If any Man Love the World the Love of the Father is not in him 1 John 2.15 So powerful are the things here below to keep or to withdraw Men from a hearty Love and Regard of God and Religion The Third and Last thing prevalent to this most fatal Evil and Impiety is The Fear or Danger of present Sufferings A Life of Ease Pleasure and Plenty is grateful to all Men whereupon many do readily imbrace the smooth side of Religion But Suffering and Persecution are things contrary to Flesh and Blood and are indeed severe and terrible Tryals such as will even shake the most steady and resolute Christian Wherefore to speak with the Apostle in this Case also Who is sufficient for these things And whatever Men may now think or talk of it at a distance yet if ever God should call us to this fiery Tryal it will require a most steady Faith together with extraordinary assistance of the Divine Spirit to carry us through such extreme Hardship and Difficulty Peter who was so constant with our Saviour and who was withal so brisk plain and generous in his Profession of Christ and so resolved as nothing could be more And who its reasonable to think was in his own Judgment firm and immoveable was yet we know strangely surprised and utterly confounded when it came to the pinch insomuch that hardly ever Man was guilty of such a base and sudden Revolt He found when Danger was very near and threatning quite different Judgments and Apprehensions of things then when he considered it only at a distance as will be the case of every Man whom God calls to this most severe and difficult Duty There are great and unavoidable Prejudices and Reluctances in human Nature against Torments or Sufferings and very strange Perplexities and Misgivings of Mind in that great Change from this to another World Besides there must needs be unconceiveable Convulsions arise in us from our Injury or Loss in those things that are instrumental to our present Ease and Comforts and therefore our Saviour might well put that Question Are ye able to drink of the Cup that I shall drink of and to be haptized with the Baptism that I am Baptized Matth. 20.22 This he tells us shall be the Portion of some but upon this Rock very many have made Shipwrack of Faith and a good Conscience having proved the greatest cause of Mens being Ashamed of Christ and his Words in an Adulterous and Sinful Generation Having thus considered what that is which our Saviour here warns us against by our being Ashamed of Christ and his Words And Secondly What are or may be the Temptations thereunto I proceed to consider in the Third place The great Guilt or Aggravation hereof which will largely appear to us from the Consideration of these following Particulars 1. Thus to be Ashamed of Christ and his Words is the greatest Disservice and Scandal to Religion For if we consider the Expression according to a meer literal acceptation That is ever more looked upon as most Base and Scandalous which Men are loth or ashamed to own or acknowledge Certain it is That a Disowning or Dissertion of Christ and his Religion in whatever way or kind we do it is an open Declaration to the World of our great dislike thereof a plain Repentance of what we have professed and as it were Advice or Precaution to others against all future concern or regard for God and Religion The Actions of such a Man do seem to speak the Sense of his Mind after this or the like manner All the whole business of Religion is meer Noise Cheat or Imposture And whatever Men talk or say about it is all vain and insignificant Why should we wait on the Lord any longer It is in vain to serve God and what profit is it that we have kept his Ordinance Therefore they say unto God depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways What is the Almighty that we should serve him And what profit should we have if we pray unto him In short That Religion is not worth the Owning which a Man cannot Suffer Bleed and Dye for 2. And this brings us to a Second Aggravation thereof That it is the highest Indignity or Dishonour to God Such is imply'd in the very Expression for it Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my Words So that to be thus guilty is to assront God and is a perfect and open Defiance to Heaven it self for 't is the peculiar and immediate Cause of God who is the Author of Religion for whose sake and on whose account this is Instituted and Enjoyn'd us So that thus basely to desert or any wise to forsake or deny him is not only a withdrawing our Fealty and Allegiance from him but the setting up a profess'd Hostility and Rebellion against him and a down-right Declaration that we will not have Him to reign over us In a Word This is the greatest Obstinacy the most daring Provocation the highest Treachery that a mortal Creature can be guilty of against the most gracious and almighty Being of God and carries every thing in it that may render it exceeding Sinful 3. Another great Aggravation hereof is That it is contrary to the Sentiments of our