Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	faith_n	grace_n	work_v	7,291	5	7.3947	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67467	The life of Dr. Sanderson, late Bishop of Lincoln written by Izaak Walton ; to which is added, some short tracts or cases of conscience written by the said Bishop.	Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judgment concerning submission to usurpers.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Pax ecclesiae.; Hooker, Richard, 1553 or 4-1600. Sermon of Richard Hooker, author of those learned books of Ecclesiastical politie.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judgment in one view for the settlement of the church.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judicium Universitatis Oxoniensis. English.	1678 (1678)	Wing W667; ESTC R8226	137,878	542

ways which either the rigid Calvinists or the Arminians have taken Quaere then whether or no the Eternal Decrees of God concerning man's Salvation may not be conveniently conceived in this order viz. That he decreed 1. To make himself glorious by communicating his goodness in producing powerfully and ex nihilo a world of Creatures and among the chiefest of them Man endued with a reasonable soul and organical body as a vessel and subject capable of grace and glory 2. To enter into a Covenant with this reasonable Creature commonly called the first Covenant of Works to bestow upon him life and glory if he should continue in his obedience but if otherwise then not only to be deprived of the blessedness covenanted but also and instead thereof to be punished with actual misery and eternal death 3. After this Covenant made to leave man in manu consilij sui by the free choice of his own will to lay hold either on life by obedience or by transgression on death 4. To permit man thus left to himself to fall into sin and so to cast himself out of that Covenant into a state of misery and corruption and damnation with a purpose in that permission to serve himself of mans fall as a fit occasion whereby to magnifie himself and his own glory yet farther in the manifestation of his infinite both justice and mercy 5. That the whole Species of so noble a Creature might not perish everlastingly and without all remedy to provide for mankind pro genere humano a most wise sufficient and convenient means of reparation and redemption and salvation by the satisfactory and meritorious death and obedience of the incarnate Son of God Jesus Christ God blessed for ever 6. In this Jesus as the Mediator to enter into a second Covenant with Mankind commonly called the New Covenant or the Covenant of Grace that whosoever should lay hold on him by a true and steadfast Faith should attain remission of sins and eternal life but he that should not believe should perish everlastingly in his sins 7. Lest this Covenant should yet be ineffectual and Christ die in vain because left to themselves especially in this wretched state of corruption none of the Sons of Adam could de facto have repented and believed in Christ for the glory of his grace to elect and cull a certain number of particular persons out of the corrupted lump of mankind to be advanced into this Covenant and thereby entitled unto Salvation and that without any cause or motive at all in themselves but meerly ex beneplacito voluntatis of his own free grace and good pleasure in Jesus Christ pretermitting and passing by the rest to perish justly in their sins 8. To confer in due season upon the persons so elected all fit and effectual means and graces needful for them unto Salvation proportionably to their personal capacities and conditions as namely 1. Upon Infants that die before the use of Reason the Sacrament of Christian Baptism administred and received in the Name and Faith of the Chuch with Sacramental grace to such persons as for the want of the use of Reason never come to be capable of the habitual or actual graces of Faith Repentance c. we are to judge to be sufficient for their Salvation 2. Upon men that come to the use of Reason sooner or later such a measure of Faith in the Son of God of repentance from dead works of new and holy obedience to God's Commandments together with final perseverance in all these as in his excellent wisdom he seeth meet wrought and preserved in them outwardly by the Word and Sacraments and inwardly by the operation of his holy Spirit shed in their hearts whereby sweetly and without constraint but yet effectually their understandings wills and affections are subdued to the acknowledgment and obedience of the Gospel and both these are done ordinarily and by ordinary means 3. Into some men it may be and extraordinarily especially in the want of ordinary means God may infuse Faith and other Graces accompanying Salvation as also modo nobis incognito make supply unto Infants unbaptized some other way by the immediate work of his Holy and Almighty Spirit without the use of the outward means of the Word and Sacraments Of which extraordinary work we cannot pronounce too sparingly the special use whereto it serveth us being the suspending of our Censures not rashly to pass the Sentence of Damnation upon those Infants or Men that want the ordinary outward means since we are not able to say How God in his infinite power can and how in his rich mercy he hath doth or will deal with them 9. Thus much concerning the salvation of those whom God hath of his free grace elected thereunto But with the Reprobates whom he hath in his justice appointed to destruction he dealeth in another fashion as concerning whom he hath decreed either 1. To afford them neither the extraordinary nor so much as but the outward and ordinary means of Faith Or else 2. In the presence of the outward means of the Word and Sacraments to withhold the inward concurrence of his enlightning and renewing Spirit to work with those means for want whereof they become ineffectual to them for their good working upon them either malignantly so as their hearts are the more hardened thereby in sin and unbelief or infirmly so as not to work in them a perfect Conversion but to produce instead of the gracious habits of Sanctification as Faith Repentance Charity Humility c. some weak and infirm shadows of those Graces which for their formal semblance sake do sometimes bear the name of those Graces they resemble but were never in the mean time the very true Graces themselves and in the end are discovered to have been false by the want of perseverance IV. Vtilitas hujus Seriei This way of ordering the Decrees of God besides that it seemeth to be according to the mind of the Scriptures and to hold correspondency more than any other as well with the writings of the ancient Doctors of the Church especially of St. Augustine and those that followed him as with the present Doctrine contained in the Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England It hath also three notable commodities viz. 1. Hereby are fairly avoided the most and greatest of those inconveniences into which both extremes run or at the least which either extreme presseth sore upon the opposite extreme The Arminian accusing the rigid Calvinist as a betrayer of the justice of God for placing the Decree of Reprobation before that of Adam's fall and being again accused by him as an Enemy to the grace of God for making the efficacy thereof to depend upon man's free will Whereas both the glory of the justice of God and the efficacy of the grace of God are preserved entire by following this middle way For 1. There can lie no imputation upon the justice of God though he have reprobated some

and elected others who were both equal in the sinful mass of corrupt nature rather his mercy is to be magnified in that he hath not reprobated all Which if he had done his justice must yet have stood clear though examined but even at the Bar of Humane Reason for so much as all had deserved to be Reprobates and that most justly for their sin in Adam They that make the Decree of Reprobation to precede all respect to the fall are put to many difficulties how to express themselves so as to avoid cavil and much ado they have to assert the Decrees of God from being howsoever unjust being enforced to succour the justice of God by flying to that absolute right and power he hath in and over the Creature whereas this way cutteth off an hundred of those Cavils the Arminians commonly use and justifieth the proceedings of our most righteous God in all respects so clearly that his justice both in the Decrees themselves and in the execution thereof is not only apparent but also illustrious and glorious 2. No impeachment is done to grace by magnifying nature or to the efficacy of grace by enlarging the powers of Free-will For whereas in very truth the Arminians cannot with all their subtil distinctions and nice modifications escape it but when they have done and said what they can they must stand guilty of symbolizing with the Pelagians both in their Principles and Conclusions in giving man's will and not God's grace the chiefest stroke and the deciding and last determinating and casting power in the work of conversion by this way the will of man is so freed from all coactive necessity in the coversion of a sinner as that yet the effect it self dependeth not upon the determination of the will as the immediate and prime cause but upon the efficacy of grace powerfully enclining the will thereunto 2. Sundry passages in the Scriptures and in the writings of the Fathers which have in them some appearance of contradiction may by following this way be easily reconciled and the sense of those passages oftentimes preserved even to the letter which by those that take the extreme ways cannot be done so handsomly nor without imposing upon the words a more remote and improper if not sometimes a strained and enforced sense as viz. 1. Those places that speak of election as in and by and through Christ making him the foundation of that also as of every other grace with those that speak of it as issuing from the meer free pleasure and absolute will of God 2. Those places that extend the fruit of Christ's death and the benefit of the new Covenant to the whole world of mankind with those that restrain them to the Elect only 3. Those places that ascribe the whole course of man's salvation from his first calling unto grace untill his final consummation in glory to the sole effectual working of the Holy Ghost with those that attribute something or other therein more or less to the power and exercise of man's Free-will 4. Those places that speak of the acts of justification and sanctification or of the habits of faith and love and other inherent graces as peculiar to the Elect only with those that speak of them as common to the Elect with Cast-aways 5. Those places that speak of the said gracious habits as permanent as neither subject to a total intercision nor possible to be finally lost with those that speak of them as casual and such as may be lost either finally or totally or both 6. Those places that speak of obduration occecation c. so as if the blindness that is in the minds and hardness that is in the hearts of wicked men were from God with those that impute such blindness and hardness in men unto the wilfulness of their own corrupt hearts 3. Hence may be received good light for the cutting off of some the moderating of other some and the resolving of the rest of those questions which are now most in agitation not only in the Church of England but in many foreign Churches also both Popish and Reformed as viz. amongst others these 1. Whether Christ was ordained a Mediator in the intention of God for mankind indefinitely or universally for all mankind or only for the Elect 2. Whether all mankind have title to the second Covenant and to the Promises and Conditions therein proposed or the Elect only 3. Whether the wicked who are both disobedient and unbelievers come under the sentence of Condemnation formally for their disobedience unto God in the breach of the first Covenant or for their unbelief in not resting upon Christ and the Promises of the new Covenant 4. In what comprehension man is to be considered as the Object of Predestination 5. Whether or no God did elect men unto Salvation in a certain and determinate number 6. Whether or no in electing men unto salvation God had respect unto Christ 7. Whether in electing some and rejecting others God was moved to decree as he did from the faith or infidelity of the persons or from any other thing whatsoever foreseen in them 8. Whether the decrees of Election Reprobation be absolute and peremptory and inalterable by Gods determination of them to a certain effect or so conditional and indeterminate as that the performance or non-performance of something required on our part may either establish or annull them Quod est quaerere Whether an elect person by disobedience and unbelief can cut off himself from the Covenant of Grace as to be damned or a Reprobate by faith and repentance so lay hold on the Covenant as to be saved 9. Whether a man by the power of his Free-will can lay hold on Christ by faith and convert himself from sin by Repentance and new Obedience without the grace of special illumination from the holy Spirit of God 10. Whether the right use of naturals be any cause to induce God to confer upon any man sufficient Grace for his Conversion 11. Whether the same grace of spiritual illumination which is sufficient and effectual for the conversion of one man can in the same measure be effectual to another for his conversion 12. Whether the efficacy of the grace of conversion depend upon the determination of man's Free-will so as by resisting to make it ineffectual 13. Whether justification and sanctification be proper to the Elect only 14. What measure of assurance we have concerning the justification of Infants born of Christian Parents and rightly baptized before they come to the use of Reason to commit actual sin 15. What measure of assurance we have concerning the salvation of such Infants so baptized if they die before they come to the use of Reason 16. Whether a person once truly justified by his own actual faith and sanctified with the Spirit of holiness can fall wholly from the state of grace into the state of sin in a total loss of faith and other habitual graces 17. Whether a person so