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	jesus_n	lord_n	6,771	5	3.6067	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28148	A certaine sound, or, An alarm sounded to the persecuting episcopalians in and about the cities of London & Westminster those bloody cities in many whoredoms, and to the rest of that sect throughout the nations who prophanely, bloodily, or maliciously now have, or heretofore have had any hand in persecuting the innocent servants and prophets of the most high, for the exercise of their pure conscience to the Lord God their creator.	Billing, Edward, 1623-1686.; Burrough, Edward, 1634-1662.	1665 (1665)	Wing B2899; ESTC R32746	9,660	15

Innocent Flock it cannot be so for they shall then dread though they now make merry over the Lords Witness and Witnesses that most dreadful and irrevocable malediction Go ye cursed yea when such come to dye the Light of Christ Jesus with which every man is enlightned that comes into the World shall arise in the Conscience to the utter condemnation of all those who in their life-time have despised or disobeyed it Then shall the betrayers of the Just and hard-hearted imprisoners of the innocent to death for obeying it know what it is to be a Iudas or a Pharaoh Then shall the worldly-wise and rich with the false divining Hireling their frontier and leader who serpent-like to save self have bowed to and even twisted about every green and dry tree that in the deceit hath stood up feel the Parable of Dives and know that Lazarus the poor poor in Spirit in the faithfulness is the Seed that doth and must inherit Now if you be men and would be deemed in any measure rational to posterity for what you do have done against us positively declare what 's the evil these People called Quakers as a people have done or if you have ought against them but for their worshipping the living God of Heaven and Earth in Spirit Truth and Righteousness nay farther if they have left undone any thing that they ought to have done in the Spirit of God and according to the Scriptures of Truth make it appear for our souls delight to be and are subject to the higher or highest power and in my heart I intend most willingly and for conscience sake actively to be obedient to every Ordinance of man which is or shall be made for the Lords sake I say by plain Scripture command of Jesus our Lord or pure example from his holy Apostles detect our principle and practice if you can and without supposition or false allegation orderly set forth to the world what detriment we have brought upon the good People of these Nations since it pleased the Lord first to raise us up therein and also what the evil is that we have done you who have thus spilt and drank our blood without Mercy Have we done ought against you except reprove you for your rending and damming Superstition and Idolatry prophane and unmanly as well as antichristian Persecution with the rest of your superabounding evils and uncleanesses in which you wallow that you might repent amend your lives and be saved I say again produce your charge against us under your hands plainly and directly setting forth and declaring matter of Fact only without allegation dubious supposition or any manner of clandestine trick or intreague of State-Policy dissonant to Scripture or forreign to the matter that it may be transmitted to the ends of the earth or at least so far as your spirit hath traduced or made odious us or our Principle that all reasonable and unprejudiced people in the world may judge whether it bear in it cause enough thus to kill us in your Coals and Holes force and banish us out of our Nation where of we are as free-born as your selves And when you have thus manifestly plainly and publickly emitted your charge into the world then lay by your Swords Clubs Goals and ungodly Laws and bring forth your Priests also with whom if not for whom you thus engage Soul and Body and let them publickly thorowly and equally dispute your and their Religion and what they can vive voce face to face say or rather prove against us or our Principle in Religion who in the Spirit of Truth serve and fear the Lord by you called Quakers I am sure if they your Priests be spiritual men or but so much as spiritually minded it cannot be denyed on their parts And this would be a good way to try Spirits and for you and them to try and hear Truth and be tryed by it and true Religion is a Spiritual not a State matter and whoso is found in the Error let the smooth stone of David be slang into their hearts by the hand of a holy man to convince and the Sword of the Lord run through and through them as his most holy Spirit shall give utterance And if to that they will not submit leave it to the Lord of the Harvest for further or contrary to this no Man or Power upon Earth hath Commission from Christ Jesus to act So consider well what Church you are of and whose Servants and Ministers you are that instigate the Rulers who are too apt of themselves to imprison and hew down the Innocent with carnal swords promp and help Parliaments to make Laws against us move the inferiour Magistrates to execute them and cause dissolute Souldiers to tear us out of our holy Meetings from thence drag and drive us into your Goals and Dungeons there to be kept till Banishment or Death whereby in the Curse you rend assunder the endeared Husband from the tender and faithfull Wife whom God hath joyned together dislocating the blessed Child from the righteous Parent the faithful Servant from his honest Master and calling the Master from the Servant c. If this be Christian or Apostolical I know not what is Antichristian and Diabolical Most certain I am Precept from Christ Example from his Apostles or the least seeming vestage in any of their Writings for such doings you cannot pretend and the right generous English Spirit abhors such Salvagism as Hell Then in this matter who are you like or to whom may I compare you but your selves Except in that of your Oaths of Alleageance and Supreamacy you run parallel with the Roman Episcopalians in the late Marian Persecution with the Sacrament of their Altar the one they used as a Roman Gin against the then Martyrs the other you impose as an Antichristian Snare upon Us the now obeyers of the true Christ who saith Swear not at all c. For often-times when neither your selves your late made cruel Edicts nor the Multitude who for the most part have been for you against us can raise seeming plausible matter enough against the truly Innocent to ensnare and incasserate their persons Then I have often seen and observed your last subterfuge to be viz. O but will you take the Oath of Alleageance and sometimes it 's Will you take the Oaths of Alleagiance and Supremacy whenas for pure Conscience-sake we who profess Christianity and are Christians indeed as wel as in words cannot may not dare not swear by Heaven Earth Evangelists or any other Oath whatsoever because the promised Messiah and performed Oath of God of whom Oaths under the Law were a Type hath commanded us in express words But I say unto you Swear not at all but let your yea be yea and your nay nay c. and his Apostle Iames saith Above all things my Brethren swear not So that being absolutely commanded by the Son of God and precautioned or rather confirmed by his

good Apostle whose indispensable Commands and Doctrine should be Catholick however to us that are not our own but bought and re-redeemed with a price even the Blood of our immaculate Lord it sufficeth and therefore we dare not may not turn his immortal Law behind our backs nor tread his most precious Blood under our feet And I do believe in my heart most of you cannot but know before-hand even before you offer us an Oath that it is our avowed Principle not to swear at all and we dare not assume that unholy liberty or accursed dispensation to break that most sacred most royal and indispensible Law of our Redeemer as many of you lately did for your ungodly ends when against your Consciences and against your earthly King you sware To be true and faithful to the Commonwealth as it was then established without King or House of Lords Nay with us it is nothing so for the truly Faithful most gladly suffer the loss of all even to the Death rather than against their Conscience break one iota of their KING of Kings Command and he that wilfully breaks one is guilty of all even so he that is not faithful in a little shall never be made a Ruler in much So that I cannot say for what you do against us as also against your own souls and consciences as Christ said to the old Iews You know not what you do but I can truly say You know not or at least wisely consider not what will follow for these your most unreasonable outrages Indeed most of our present Adversaries are men of Oaths much addicted to Swearing and Cursing for and under which the good People of the Land do bitterly mourn and they themselves shall howl though at the present they trample under their feet as a thing of nought the Name of our God imploring him often to damn and sink them insulting over his Innocent Seed plowing broad deep and most inhumane furrows on the backs of his righteous People at their pleasure contrary to all Law and good Reason Not less than five or six thousand of us called Quakers imprisoned at a time since you called Episcopal Protestants came into outward power Thus have you killed us all your day long and exposed to outward ruine the Families of the Faithful in the Land making many Widows oppressing their Fatherless even as it were chopping them and theirs in pieces as flesh for your Cauldron according to the Edict of your own hearts lust yet in all this you are no Conquerours and which is far worse for all this you shall come to Iudgment For the Mower saith All flesh is grass And accursed is the man that trusteth in man or maketh flesh his arm And Lord if what 's already done and in their hearts to do be not enough to fill the measure up of those who on thy holy People for their pure Conscience do impose On me lay on thy pondrous weight give me but strength to bear permit them Lord my blood to drink and flesh to tear Yet Lord I 'm not i th' hast but on thy holy leisure cry How long how long O Lord my God most holy just and high For Lord I know deliverance to thy Seed nor evil to the City can be done Good or Vengeance wrought thereon but by thy holy self alone Therefore freely and with all my heart the manner way and final disquisition of these things I leave to thee my God who art the King of Kings transmuter and establisher of all things Vita Veritate omniaque E. B. THE END † When as the Blood of one innocent man is fully able to overthrow a Nation much more a hundred two prophane superstitious and hypocritical Cities * Besides at three other times very lately before you dragg'd out of that Goal and in like manner forced on shipboard eighteen innocent true men called Quakers whereof one of them through your most savage usage immediately as you had forced him on Ship-board fell down upon the deck and soon after dyed † In which one among your selves in no mean authority said he would not sail to Gravesend in to have her † For the denyal of both or either great are the numbers of us that have been imprisoned even several to Death and yet I have not known any Roman Catholick that hath suffered either Imprisonment or so much as loss of Preferment among you for refusing the latter whenas they do acknowldge a forreign Head and he is but a man and it is as well known that we Christians do nor ever did acknowledge any other Head of our Church but CHRIST alone so that if I were of an aggravating spirit I might say Why Us and not the Papists But it 's not my principle to irritate or stir up any against another to ease my self but I feel who you favour and who you hate * This could not be meant prophane swearing for under the Law that was forbidden viz. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain but Iudicial swearing was by the Law of Moses allowed