Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	false_a	zeal_n	zealous_a	62	3	9.2113	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A84091	An essay on hypocrasie and Pharisaism. As it was set forth in a Sermon / by A curate of souls.	Curate of Souls.; J. W.	1683 (1683)	Wing E3288; ESTC R176777	25,935	40

take it upon them to transcend the degrees of public Devotion and religious exercise which the Law and practice of the Church does direct and determine and shall accordingly teach others already prepared and wisely resolved to be led by them they may advance as high as they please and where they will stop who can divine There are no fixed limits beyond these lines no bounds to such pious extravagancies And that they will go as high as they can is not to be doubted For the grand design of such men being to maintain themselvs in the public faith and esteem for the greatest zealots and Devoto's to Religion it is their interest to hold up their profession to the strongest bent they are able to blind and burden their Proselytes as much as may be and to screw up their minds as high as they are capable Because these are they that communicate their formal sanctity they are the Trumpeters of their fame and cry up their extraordinary holiness and devotion to the world Accordingly this sort of men have ever bin cautious of explaining themselvs but have chosen for the most part to deliver their minds in dark sayings in obscure and mystical negative and indefinite Expressions as if they studyed more how to allure and confound rather than inform the understandings of men whereby they might keep their Proselytes always in the clouds and upon the highest flight of contemplation And that this is the directest rode to distraction needs little more to demonstrate For when the mind of man is held up to the straitest bent invited onwards with a conceit of Heaven before him and pushed with the fears of Hell behind him he knows not whither nor how far but is continually puzled with a fearful suspense concerning the Issues of his own Eternity this must needs very much perplex and weaken if not quite distract the man and break his spirit and plunge him into despair And because the Pharisees of old did thus keep their Proselytes continually under the Hatches of a blind Devotion and melancholy therefore there abounded among them so may sullen and peevish and lunatick persons so many proud and furious and fanatical spirits 2. This is that other effect whereby does appear the danger that is in Pharisaism as to entangling mens souls in the snare of the Devil viz. because it does directly tend to render them of a furious and fanatical spirit And accordingly the Assembly of Divines with M. Diodate do interpret the fore-mentioned Scripture which saith that the Pharisees made a Proselyte twofold more the Child of hell than themselvs viz. that they made him more fiery and bitter against the Preachers and the preaching of the Gospel than themselvs were And this is a very likely effect of Pharisaism For when men are possessed with a passionate admiration and ungovernable affection for any profession of Religion whatsoever as they think they can never do enough nor better than to promote it so they are also commonly persuaded it is most conducible to this great purpose to vilify and mischief whatsoever stands in competition with it Every one would do something in behalf of his Religion to defend and propagate his faith and those that can do nothing by force of argument will therefore exert their zeal in noise and clamour endeavouring to make up in spite and mischief to their Adversaries what they want in wisedom Such is the influence which a false Religion or a misunderstanding of the true Religion hath upon the spirits of weak men that are passionately devoted to it But especially Pharisaism drives this way Such a Religion as appropriates all divine favours to its own professors and reprobates all others with the utmost wrath and Vengeance and thereby swells and inflames the hearts of its zealous Proselytes with pride and conceit of themselvs with hatred and contempt of others that whets up the angry powers of their minds and sets a continual edge upon them Such a Religion also as tends to perplex and distract the understandings of its Proselytes with the mysterious and boundless opinions and practices which it does hold forth and impose seems to take the nearest course to fanaticism because it does so much as in it lyeth to disquiet their judgments and imbitter their spirits It labours to drive out the good spirit and to infuse an evil Spirit So that if men were not naturally before of a peevish and melancholy constitution the imbibing such a Religion were a likely Alterative for the purpose and to render them unsociable with any but such as are of the same humour and persuasion Being thus disposed it cannot be expected but that they should treat such as any way oppose them in the most fiery and invective manner and rather than want make occasion to fall out with them if it be for nothing else but to give vent to their swelling passions and bewildred understandings And the more furious yet will they be if their Religion does any way countenance the undertaking And this Pharisaism does in an especial manner For it holds forth such a necessity of its extraordinary Devotion that none can be saved without their best observance of it and then by consequence teaches it to be the duty of all its professours to endeavour by all means the proselyting other men to their Religion rather than let them perish Yet takes no care to determine a certain method for the work but leaves the execution of so pious a pretence to the construction of the zealous undertaker according to his uncertain genius and favorable occasions So that whatsoever mischief they do in their religious fits there is a salvo for all in the sacred design of converting a sinner and saving his soul in the day of the Lord. And where there is such a conjunction of peevish angry and zealous spirits with the pretence of Religious necessity it hath the most malevolent aspect of all there being none more mischievous more furious and unaccountable in their carriage and proceedings than such creatures inform'd and actuated by a pretended spirit of Religion and if they be in a powerful sphere there is no standing before them Accordingly S. Paul doth characterize himself while he was a Pharisee and lived after the strictest Sect of the Jewish Religion a Pharisee that he persecuted the way of Christ even to the death that out of a zeal for God he became a blasphemer a persecutour and injurious Whereby he plainly sheweth the spirit of Pharisaism to be a furious and fanatical spirit that the Proselytes the weaker sort of the Pharisees being hurried on with blind zeal were more fierce and eager against the sincerity and preaching of the Gospel than the teaching and ruling part of them were tho they set them on No these were taken up in consulting and projecting matters of scandal against our Saviour and his proceedings But the rude and most odious and barbarous part they committed mostly to the rash multitude to