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	heart_n	work_n	7,151	5	5.4540	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26833	A sermon preach'd before the Queen in Christ-Church, Canterbury, May iv. 1694 by John Battely ...	Battely, John, 1647-1708.	1694 (1694)	Wing B1151; ESTC R11113	9,154	27

God to be every where are about our Beds and about our Paths and beset us in all our ways For instance on our right hands we have Pleasures bewitching us into their impure Embraces Profit casting out its golden Baits to entice us Applause and Honour displaying their Pomps and Vanities to draw us after them through all the unlawful ways they would lead us We have Sloth and Ease and Security like heavy dead weights hanging upon and hindring us from running the Race that is set before us Plenty and Prosperity tempting us to forget God who gave us them or to misemploy them to his disservice On the left hand the World presents us with a quite different unpleasant prospect of Oppositions and Hardships of Scorn and Shame of Poverty and Want nay sometimes and may that Scene never open in our days as it once threatned to do with Bonds and Imprisonments with Torments and Death to be undergone by those who would live godly in the true profession of the Faith of Jesus Christ It has indeed pleas'd God in mercy to remove these extraordinary discouragements in our duty but still we have ordinary and common ones enough to encounter with such as are the general neglect of real true Religion which makes it disregarded as a thing out of fashion The disputes about it among the seemingly Learned and Wise but really contentious which shake and unsettle it It 's being derided by the pretended Wits and consequently decried by their Admirers the Atheistical Fools of this Age which makes it every where a sport and a by-word and a subject for those ill-furnisht heads and ill-disposed minds who cannot be witty without being prophane to trifle with all which determents from the paths of true Wisdom our Faith alone and that a lively active one must and can overcome for us But this is not all The World I mean what is bad in it stops not here but malitiously pursues us in all the circumstances of our lives so that nothing either good or bad can happen to us but that the World mixes some of its Poyson with it and turns it to a Temptation Thus how apt are Strength and Power to tempt us to Violence and Oppression Beauty to Pride and Unchastity Sickness to Impatience Health to Security and not considering our latter end Our Table frequently becomes a Snare to us and those things which should have been for our health prove the occasion of our falling The Pleasure and Refreshment we find in our lawful Recreations tempt us to a more large and greedy enjoyment of them than is fit Our Civility and good Manners put us upon compliances in Excess and the torrent of Mirth and Company too often carries us beyond our due bounds But besides this World without us we have one within us That without this would do us little harm Those Enemies abroad hold a treacherous Correspondence with false Friends at home The Flesh is willing to comply with all that the World shall propose and is as industrious to betray as that is to destroy us That under this expression The World our carnal Lusts are comprehended this same Apostle tells us For all that is in the World C. 11. v. 16. the lust of the flesh the lust of the Eye and the pride of life is not of the Father but of the World This is a World not of God's but of our own Creating The Foundation of it was laid in the ruins of our Original Righteousness it began the same moment with Sin and hence are those Temptations that sit so close to us or rather live in us wearying us with their constant Sollicitations and melting us with their warm Entreaties warring against our Souls with the gentle but dangerous Weapons of pretended Kindness When they dispute no Arguments are so hardly answered as theirs which carry the convictions of Interest and Pleasure and Self-love along with them When they stand up to plead their own Cause they must almost necessarily prevail their Oratory has Charms and Violence hard to be resisted They seem all the while to talk on our side and therefore to deny them what they would have is called in Scripture Language denying our selves which few have the heart and resolution to do The Devil also the Prince of this World may here be understood who by insinuating himself into us by learning and observing all our secret Inclinations and then fitting his Temptations to our Lusts knows how and where to wound us as long therefore as he remains Unconquer'd our Victory is imperfect and from a consideration of this dangerous Station in which we are set and the many and powerful and subtle Enemies we have to deal with we may conclude that as by the mere strength of nature we cannot be safe so that nothing less than so powerful an assistance as that of Faith can make us Conquerours III. I come now in the last place to shew how our Faith overcomes and what kind of Victory it is that it obtains for us And first 't is not from any strength of ours that our Faith conquers Had that Weapon no force but what it receiv'd from our weak Arms it would do little Execution No 't is the Lord of Hosts the Lord mighty in Battle who even in this Spiritual Warfare teaches our hands to War and our Fingers to fight to him therefore must our Success be ascribed in his Temple must the spoils be hung up It is he who works in us all the good we do and if we can do all nay any thing 't is through Christ who strengthens us But secondly though it be through the Grace of God and by the powerful assistance of his Holy Spirit that our Faith becomes Victorious yet is the concurrence of a willing mind in us thereto requir'd For whatever God by his Omnipotence may do yet he does not ordinarily work this Work in us directly against our Wills nor inspire this Faith into our Hearts as irresistibly as at first he did the breath of Life into our Nostrils making us as purely passive in our Spiritual as we were in our natural Birth He has enabled us to do somewhat our selves else he would never be so hard so austere a Master as to require any thing of us Again our Faith doth not as some vainly expect it should Conquer this World in a moment or like a flash of Lightning from Heaven consume all our Sins and melt our Hearts and change us into quite other Men in an instant No it carries on its Victorious Arms a slow but sure and steady pace it gains ground Foot by Foot and is forc'd to dispute every step that it moves From small beginnings it proceeds by degrees to greater strength and is therefore frequently in Scripture compared to such things whose Originals are weak and almost unperceivable their increase slow and in a manner unsensible but their effects certain and powerful As for the manner of the Combat a Man's

regard to my actions let me live how I please I can apply all those gracious and glorious Promises to my self which are made only to the good and holy in a word what if I can account my self justifyed and in favour with God only because I strongly imagine that I am so Somewhat indeed very like this hath been taught for justifying Faith But can a Man's believing that he is justified be the cause of his justification A Proposition is believed because it is we think true but does not therefore presently become true because we believe it In a word let us not flatter our selves that God ever made natural assurance confidence or presumption the Conditions of our Salvation No if ever such a Faith as this renders us Conquerors 't is but just as a pleasing Dream makes us happy or as a strong but wild fancy may make Mad-men think themselves Princes That therefore by which we must conquer the World is none of these speculative aiery fanciful things but somewhat more real and substantial more strong and active Not a barren Assent like that which we give to Mathematical Demonstration whose influence reaches no further than the Judgment and renders not our Life more fruitful at all in good actions nor like the Historical Faith which the Devils have and yet continue Devils still No 't is the belief of an the wholsome Doctrines of our Christian Religion not lightly swimming and floating about in our heads but by the Grace of God and the Assistance of his Spirit so inwardly grafted in our hearts that it becomes a strong Principle of Action in us powerfully swaying us against the inclinations of our corrupt Nature and making us live at a quite different rate as if we were not the same Men that we were before we believed When we believe that Jesus is the Son of God that is when we so believe it that all the World may see a difference between us and those who do not When we walk faster and with more concern towards Heaven in the ways of God's Commandments than a little faint decay'd Morality would carry us and by that shew that a good Christian has somewhat more in him than an honest Heathen When we live in humble Obedience like Men who believe their Lawgiver to be the Son of God whose main business is Holiness and Devotion who adore his Divine Person reverence his high Authority obey his just and wise Commands and imitate his good and great Example When we heartily espouse his Interest and fight against the Lusts of the Flesh his declar'd Enemies resist the Devil whose works he came to destroy and trample upon the World which he in our nature and to encourage us by his Example overcame before us This is the Faith that must overcome the World even an active one for Heaven the reward of this Victory was never promis'd to them that did nothing What a vain thing therefore were it to think that bare believing will put us in possession of it that the Crown of Glory is expos'd as the prize not of those who run and fight but of such as idlely sit still and expect confidently that without any more ado it should at last drop upon their heads and that only because they fansie it will St. James tells us II. 26. That Faith without Works is dead How then shall its feeble lifeless hands weild all the mighty Weapons of our spiritual Warfare How shall it demolish the strong Holds of Satan disarm and bind that powerful one bring away the Spoils and set up the Trophies of its Conquests If in such a Faith only as this is we have hope we are of all Men most deceiv'd of all Men most miserable For this Victory will cost us labour and toyl and sweat nay and perhaps blood too as well as Worldly Conquests do none of which can be expected from a mere dead Belief Some are so spiritual and refin'd in their Religion that they are afraid that Works let them be never so good should marr their Faith and hinder its Efficacy And so indeed they may if we abuse them if we trust in them for Salvation and think to merit Heaven by them and justify our selves by their Righteousness The abusing them thus may but the doing them can never harm us No they give us good hopes and assurance that our Faith is alive and vigorous in us that it has or will at length if we thus persist conquer for us And this you may gather from the xi Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews which is nothing else but a lofty rehearsal of these Triumphs of Faith where the Apostle when he hath told you of Enoch's Faith which translated him an extraordinary way into the Regions of Life without so much as ever touching upon the Confines of Death subjoins as the cause of it his walking with God and pleasing hun with his good Conversation When he has told you of Noah's Faith he shews you immediately that it was such a Faith as set his hands on work about the Ark and making provision for the saving himself and his Family in the Deluge when he has mentioned Abraham's Faith the next things you hear of are its noble and wonderful Effects his leaving his native Country at God's Command going he knew not whither and making a foreign and strange Land his home how it enabled him in Obedience to God's Command to conquer the strong affection of a Father to an only Son and to lift up the Sacrificing Knife against the Fruit of his own Body the Object of his most passionate love Such a Faith therefore as will strengthen Men in doing what God would have them even when he commands the hardest things is the Faith here meant II. I proceed now in the second place to speak of the World which 't is here said to conquer And this like the visible World is of so large an extent that we cannot possibly view it all at one prospect it hath such a variety of dark and horrid Regions full of Labyrinths and Monsters that it is scarce possible to describe them and therefore it must be very hard to overcome them It hath its Depths and Abysses not to be fathom'd Rocks and Sands hardly to be avoided Storms and Tempests every where threatning us There is nothing in the Elementary World so full of difficulty danger and terrour but that this World of iniquity can shew somewhat far more dangerous and terrible If we will describe it plainly in its proper Colours which are black enough it includes all the evils and mischiefs that a Man who hath a mind to be good can reasonably be afraid of all allurements to what is bad and all discouragements from what is good all those innumerable temptations to Sin and Folly which on every side encompass us which meet us wherever we go like the air we breath in and as if they would seem like the Providence and Majesty of