Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	deed_n	flesh_n	mortify_v	5,880	5	10.8136	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26865	An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II. an answer to the accusations urged as reasons for the silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley ..., III. reasons proving it the duty and interest of the bishops and conformists to endeavour earnestly their restoration : with a postscript upon oral debates with Mr. H. Dodwell, against his reasons for their silence ... : written in 1668 and 1669, for the most of it, and now published as an addition to the defence against Dr. Stillingfleet, and as an account to the silencers of the reasons of our practice / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1681 (1681)	Wing B1189; ESTC R22103	219,337	268

reason and this goeth for Godliness when they are worse than you found them And how have you cured all that ignorance of the people which you lament If it be cured that argument for the necessity of your Preaching is gone If they are not cured how can you yet think to cure them therefore their necessity is no plea for your Preaching Ans. 1. Thus indeed the Quakers were wont to revile us in the open streets and tell us our Preaching did no good and they would point at a gaudy Coat or any thing that they accounted pride or vanity and cry out See this is the fruit of your Ministry But through the great mercy of God our success hath been such that constraineth us thankfully to acknowledg his unspeakable mercy that ever called us to so blessed a work though we had been sooner fed with the bread and water of affliction And that under Usurpation it self even while we wrote and preacht against it we had so many years liberty before we were silenced 2. A Town and Church is not a being of the same materials from time to time but like a river which consists of transient matter Abundance are dead and got safe to Heaven that we at first instructed who are yet our comforts being saved from this untoward generation and from this present evil world And those that were children when I was last with that people and taught them are now men And what need all these may have of teaching as well as their Parents had I know not But I am sure where I come that ignorance doth prevail 3. Knowledg is gotten by slow degrees especially by the poor and vulgar The School that hath been taught many years successfully may have need of teaching still The best are too ignorant and the want of knowledg will appear in the wants of virtue and obedience and good life 4. You force us to answer this also Historically But the best is we have witnesses enough upon the place I will first speak of that success which you your selves desire and then of that which we desired and which some contemn 1. This week I spake with a very learned worthy silenced Minister who dwelleth in a great Market-Town in the West who telleth me of a multitude there that have been formerly otherwise minded there is scarce two or three that now go not with him to the publick Parish-Worship When I was in Kiderminster I could have been more confident of the ruling of that people in equal ways but since I came away my silencing hath so disaffected them to the Bishops more than I then left them that multitudes will not communicate in the Sacrament in publick I cannot come at them nor I do not write to them lest I offend those that think I do but seduce them But those that call on me say VVe cannot embody our selves in Church-communion with such persecutors Especially since several of them have lain in the Goal but before they had no such argument to plead Yet do I usually satisfie those that speak to me here in their travels But that is but a few But yet I hear not of four men and women in the Town that do not come to the publick Assembly I have told you at Acton where I lived last I knew not of three persons of all my hearers of that Parish that did not come to the publick Assembly and join in the use of the Liturgy So much for that part of our success 2. But I will not deny to you that we define not Godliness by Conformity to Diocesans or Ceremonies and therefore have another kind of success which we first and more endeavour which is to teach them the meaning of their Baptismal Covenant and the Creed Lords-prayer and Ten Commandments and to teach them to believe aright in Christ and to love God above all and their neighbour as themselves and to live soberly righteously and godly in the world and to have their hearts and conversations in Heaven and by the spirit to mortifie the lusts and deeds of the flesh And if we can get them well to digest and practise thus much we think we have not lost our labour though they are not yet acute enough to cut by so small a thred as some more subtle wits nor to cleave a hair nor to decide all Controversies about Diocesans and ceremonies And seeing neither of these are in our Creed we hold them no articles of our Faith and therefore not necessary to our hearers Salvation And as to our success in this the men themselves and those that know them and see their lives are the fittest Judges I meddle not with other men I must say of my own hearers with humble thankfulness to God that when I came to Kiderminster it was noted publickly for one of the rudest Towns in the County and when I left them it was much otherwise And to those that may say It is but in prating phrases and cutting faces and thinking themselves better than others I answer 1. They were not Academicks much less Doctors they spake not artificially according to the rules of Rhetorick or Logick They could not dispute well of the fixed Stars or Planets the Vortices or Spheres the Elements or Atoms c. And they are in their garb and speech as poor men are both plain and some of them rustical And when they talk of Religion some of them are not free from some such unaccurate expressions and uncogent arguings as in the Schools would make them ridiculous And they pray not all in words so accurate especially the youngest as I could wish I could do my self But some of them understand the Body of Divinity and the Doctrinal Controversies too which I have written on and pray in so good order and expression as I meet not now with one Parish-Minister of ten or twenty that excelleth them Indeed those of them that fear God do take themselves to be better and happier now than they were when they feared him not or than drunkards worldlings and malicious enemies of Godliness are And though they abhor the Pharisees hypocritical thanks they think that unthankfulness to God for his grace is no virtue nor thankfulness a vice or thing indifferent They are eminent for humility so far from a proud and preaching vein when it was the temptation and disorder of the time that I could never get one man of them to try his parts by one private Exercise that way some from Oxford that admired them would have drawn some of them towards the Ministry which made me wish them to a trial but never could procure it I never knew of one man that preacht or expounded Scripture to others unless in conference about the sense of a Text in all the time that I was there Though I am not one that condemn all that in their families do otherwise They were not then noted for censorious to dissenters unless two or three particular persons They addicted