Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	church_n	holy_a	truth_n	6,992	5	5.6746	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

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

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.

from the Church And 't is from you that even the Quakering Sect it self the dregs of Schism have learned to talk of Illumination and the Spirit and the rest of the Sectaries in what number soever they be differ no more from you than the second third or fourth c. from the first Book of Euclid Not that by this comparison I intend that you have any such Principles or Data among your selves as there are among Mathematicians for I am very well assured that take but any four of the Presbyterian Demagogues and they can scarce agree amongst themselves in any four Particulars wherein they differ from the Church of England And therefore if you be not Schismaticks then the Church of England from which you separate and out of which you have gathered Congregations and preach and administer the Sacraments unto them I say if you be not Schismaticks then our Church must be the Schismatick in the Controversie between us and be justly chargable with the same Indictment which she hath drawn up against the Church of Rome An Assertion Cousin which I never knew any other Person except one or two besides your self have the confidence to aver and an Assertion which no Protestant here in France could hear us yet relate without Horror Impatience and Disdain And therefore if the Reformed Church of England from which you wilfully divide and to which by your Divisions you cause so much Scandal abroad and Evil at home be not a Schismatical Church that is a Church which requires some sinful conditions of Communion in what a woful condition will your unpeaceable seditious Spirits appear before the God of Peace And how will you answer that at the Tribunal of his Wisdom and Justice which neither your Fathers nor you could ever yet answer to those Instruments of his Glory Judicious Hooker and the Venerable Sanderson But whether you are Schismaticks or whether you are not the Separations which you and your Brood have made from the Church are the Apparent Causes of the Growth of Popery and both your Separations and your Superstitious Enthusiastical Way of Worshipping that God whose People you Emphatically pretend to be are the true Causes of that abundant Atheism which at present makes England an Astonishment and a Scandal to Foreign Nations And if you or any other of the Brother-hood think it strange that I charge yours which is the Capital Sect with Enthusiasm or make Superstition which seemeth diametrically opposite to Atheism the Mother thereof I offer upon the Challenge to make good the Charge in both particulars But in the mean time to show you how unsafe it will be to provoke me to that Trouble I advise you to read one or two short Chapters in the beginning of Mr. Smith's Discourses concerning these Distempers of the Soul and you shall find what I have said proved with more Demonstration than you can gainsay and with more Plainness and Perspicuity than I am confident you would wish to see But besides the Schism and Enthusiasm the Bloody Wars which you formerly made in the State under pretence of the Glory of God and the Reformation of of the Reformed Religion have given many inconsiderate men occasion to suspect that all Religion like that of most of your Leaders is but a Politick Engine which Men use to make themselves Popular and Powerful that they may afterwards act with good colour whatsoever their Interest shall suggest And furthermore to consider That the great Pretenders of the Spirit and the Power of the Christian Religion which with respect to Magistrates teacheth nothing but to obey or su●er should notwithstanding Preach up Rebellion against their Rightful Prince Fight Him from Field to Field Romove Him from Prison to Prison and at last most barbarously put Him to Death is such an Absurdity against the Principles of Right Reason so repugnant to the Laws of our own Nation and so inconsistent with the Peaceable Doctrine of the Gospel that besides the Atheists it hath made it hath and ever will constrain Men of honest Principles and just Resentments to Persecute you with Satyrs and Exclamations to the end of the World I had not here presented that Tragical Scene of the King's Murther but that I have had so many unpleasant Occasions to hear Our Nation Reproach'd with the Scandal and Dishonour of that Inhumane Fact Particularly it was my bad Fortune to be at a Station in Paris where there were met about two hundred Persons to read the Gazetts at that very same time when that of England came full charged with the News of Burning the Pope in Effigie at London This Feat did at first surprize that Roman Catholick Concourse of People but after a little recollection they ceased to wonder saying in every Company as we passed along It is not so strange that the English Devils should do this who formerly Murthered their King And another time it was my ill luck also to be at the same place when the London Gazette brought us the News That the House of Lords had taken into consideration the Growth of Atheism in our Nation Whereupon some French Gentlemen of my acquaintance seriously enquired of me the Causes of so much Atheism amongst such a Thinking and Solid People I assigned the same Reasons which I have written above besides some others which I will not stand to mention as the most probable Causes thereof And as I hope I did not misinform them so I am confident I did not unjustly charge you in any particular especially with the Murther of the King For there were no Accessaries in the Murther of that Sacred Person neither was it the last stroke only that fell'd the Royal Oak but you and the Independants like the two Sacrilegious Priests of Iupiter are equally guilty of the Crime the one for Binding the direful Victim and the other for putting the Knife to his Throat But to be short where I am so unacceptable I 'le conclude my Argument with a Fable A Principal Ship which for many Years had been Sovereign of the Seas was at last Attacted by a Tempestuous Wind which the Devil raised and notwithstanding all the Help that could be made to save her was driven by the force of that Malignant Wind and split upon a Rock The very same Instant she dashed upon the Rock the Wind ceased and being afterwards cursed by the Sea-men for the Wrack of the Royal Charles for so the Capital Vessel was called answered You Charge me most unjustly my Friends it was not I but the Rock as you saw that split your Ship The Moral of this Parable is very Obvious and if the Application thereof or any thing else that I have written may conduce to awaken your Conscience and reclaim you from Schism I shall think my pains well bestowed But if you and your seditious Brethren will still persevere to assault the Church on one Hand as fast as the Romish Priests do undermine her on the other