Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	father_n	grace_n	holy_a	10,063	5	5.0111	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91746	The meanes and method of healing in the Church. Set forth in a sermon. Preached before the Right Honourable the House of Peers in Westminster Abby, April 30. 1660. being a day of solemn humiliation to seek God for his blessing on the counsels of the Parliament. By Edward Reynolds, D.D. and Dean of Christ-Church.	Reynolds, Edward, 1599-1676.	1660 (1660)	Wing R1265; Thomason E983_32; ESTC R203411	17,461	47

Pharaoh-like put God to so many changes of Rods and variety of Judgements as we in this Nation have felt Let us yield betime unto him for he will overcome when he judgeth Let us take heed of flattering our selves when one rod is worn out or laid a side as if the bitterness of death were past God can make every Creature about us every faculty within us a Rod and a Scourge against us And therefore having received such deliverances as we lately have done let us make holy Ezra's conclusion Should we again break thy Commandments Ezra 9. 13 14 Should we not take heed of sinning any more lest a worse thing come unto us Joh. 5. 14. Should we not consider for what it is that God restored us to our stations namely that we should in our places study how to honour him to be zealous for his Truth and Pure Religion tender of the Liberties Properties and equal Rights of all the people in the Land to restore all oppressed Innocents to loose the bonds of violence and to settle these so long shaking and discomposed Nations upon the firm foundations of Truth Peace and Righteousness againe Thus much for the first General The supposition of Judgements various and such as come immediately from God and admit of no possible prevention by humane wisdome or removal by humane power II. We proceed to the Direction unto Duties wherein comes first to be considered the Quality of the persons who are to perform them My people that are called by my name All men are his Creatures only a select and peculiar inheritance that bear his name enjoy his Peace Promises and Protection and are in Covenant with him are called His People I entred into Covenant with thee and thou becamest mine saith the Lord Ezek. 16. 8. This people have I formed for my self Isa. 43. 21. The Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himselfe Psalm 4. 3. They are the people of his holiness Isa. 63. 18. A people for his name taken out from among others Acts 15. 14. To be called by his Name noteth to be his adopted Children as Josephs children were made the children of Jacob Genesis 48. 5 16. We are Gods people two wayes 1. By visible profession or Sacramental separation from the world as the whole Nation of the Jewes are called his people A peculiar Treasure unto him above all people Exod. 19. 5. A Nation nigh unto him Deut. 4. 7. His people even then when they rebelled against him Isa. 1. 3 4. 2. By Spiritual Sanctification and internal Dispositions Thine they were and thou gavest them me and they have kept thy word John 17. 6. Jews inwardly by the Circumcision of the heart Rom. 2. 29. The Israel of God Gal. 6. 16. The Children of the Promise Rom. 9. 8. The Remnant according to the Election of Grace Rom. 11. 5. The Circumcision which worship God in the spirit Phil. 3. 3. These are His people by a Price of Redemption 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. By a peculiar Designation unto his service Tit. 2. 14. By an Intimate Relation of Love and Dearness Ezek. 16. 8. By an high Valuation of them as Treasures Jewels vessels of Honour Mal. 3. 17. 1 Pet. 2. 9. 2 Tim. 2. 20. By Destination to a more glorious end Eph. 4. 30. The Duty extends to both The whole body of a visible Church are in Judgements to humble themselves and as to temporal deliverances the Lord doth respect the Humiliations of the worser Members of the Church as we see in the cases of Ahab and Rehoboam 1 Reg. 21. 28 29. 2 Chron. 12. 6 7. But to do this so effectually as to attain all the annexed promises is the work of the Israel of God by spiritual Sanctification Now from this Qualification we gather these two useful Observations I. The sins of Gods own people who are in Covenant with him may provoke and procure Judgements their Pride and Security Worldly Love Conformity to the Corruptions of the times Coldness and Formality in Duty Uneven and Unfaithfull walking acting by divided Interests from the rest of the Lords people may provoke God severely to punish a land and we may justly fear hath done so amongst us A good man though a Son may yet be silius sub ira under paternal displeasure If Moses and Aaron do not by believing glorifie God they must both die in the Wilderness Num. 20. 12. If David grow proud of victories and number the people God will send a plague which shall lessen their number and his pride 2 Sam. 24. 15. If Solomon turn from God to Women and to Idols though he be a Son he shall be chastized with the rods of men 2 Sam. 7. 14. If Asa grieve the Prophet and oppress the people he shall be vexed with Warrs and Diseases 2 Chron. 19. 9 12. If Jehoshaphat help the ungodly his life shall be endangered and his ships broken 2 Chron. 19. 20. God will have Judgement begin at his own house 1 Peter 4. 17. Their sins have some Aggravations in them which other mens have not these are committed against special light and more glorious convictions as those of Solomon After God had appeared unto him twice 1 Reg. 11. 9. Against special Love and experiences of divine favour 2 Samuel 12. 7. 9. Against special Relations the Honour of a Father a Lord an Husband Isa. 1. 2. Against special Grace and Assistance of the Holy Spirit Ephes 4. 30. Against special Covenants and Engagements after a vouching God for theirs Psalm 78. 34. Against special Deliverances from greatest dangers Ezra 9. 13 14. Against special Hopes and more special Promises which should have perswaded them unto Holiness 2 Cor. 7. 1. 1 John 3. 3. Against special Peace and glorious Comforts as David sinned against the joy of Gods salvation Psalm 51. 12. Peter denied Christ after he had seen his Transfiguration And this may teach the holiest of men 1. To take heed of playing the Wantons with the Grace of God Though God be a tender yet he may be an Angry Father And who knoweth the Power of his Anger Psalm 90. 11. 2. To be more carefull to stand in the breach against publick Judgements having by their sins contributed to the bringing of them upon the Land 2. It is not our doing of Duty but Gods being in Covenant with us which is the ground of his Mercy to us Property doth stir up Compassion Though they have provoked me yet I will spare them because they are mine Malachy 3. 17. Whence we learn 1. In what manner to go to God and to plead with him not in confidence of our Duty but of our Relation to him as His Thou art our Father we are thine Isa. 63. 16 19. The Church in Affliction seldome useth any other Argument Why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people Exod. 32. 11. Art not thou our God 2 Chron. 20. 7. We are called by thy name leave us not Jer. 14. 9. Spare thy people

we consider how much God requires and how little we perform I will go in the strength of the Lord I will make mention of thy Righteousness of thine only Psal. 71. 16. Ashur shall not save us we will not ride upon Horses nor say to the work of our hands ye are our Gods for in thee the Father less findeth Mercy Hos. 14. 3. Isa. 17. 7 8. It will make us exceeding meek and patient in Afflictions It is nothing but ignorance of our selves which makes us swell and fret against God If we be living men we have no reason to complain for we suffer less than our iniquity deserves Lam. 3. 39 40. Job 11. 6. Psal. 103 10. Ezra 9. 13. And that we may have the better and fuller view of our selves of our hearts and lives let us look upon the holy Law of God It is exceeding broad and reacheth to the smallest corruption Psalm 119. 96. Exceeding spiritual and searcheth the inmost corners of the soul Rom. 7. 14. Exceeding pure and cannot away with the least pollution Psalm 119. 140. Exceeding perfect and will not dispence with any defect Psalm 19. 7. Exceeding right and strait and cannot endure any guil of spirit Psalm 19. 8 9. Upon the exceeding great and precious promises of the Gospel which are the Portion and Dowry of the Church here below Upon the Holy Spirit of Love and Grace which sealeth Believers unto the day of Redemption Upon the free Love whereby we were elected Upon the precious blood whereby we were redeemed Upon the glorious Inheritance whereunto we are reserved Upon the gracious Image after which we are renewed This holy Law we have violated these precious Promises we have undervalued this blessed Spirit we have grieved this Grace we have abused this Image defiled this free Love this inestimable blood this glorious Inheritance we have deprized and miserably neglected ●ad disesteemed What remains but that we cry out all with the Leaper in the Law Unclean Vnclean Lastly Let us take off our sins if we be not Rocks and Adamants that will humble us We were made to converse with God and sin hath shut him out of all our thoughts We use to lament sad Alterations when a Garden of Eden is made a Wilderness Cities turned into ruinous heaps they that wear Scarlet embracing Dung-hils How should we bewail the sad change which Sin hath wrought in our Nature and Lives That a Creature stamped with the impress of the divine Image made for high and honourable Imployments should so far degenerate as to be a child of Darkness a vassal of Hell a vessel of lust That a Soul made of a kind of Angelical substance should sink it self into the balance with sordid pleasures with perishing profits with noisome lusts should barter and sell away its self and its salvation for wind for shame for vanity for rottenness and change its glory for that which doth not profit That a tongue which was made to glorifie God and to be our Glory made for prayers and praises and gracious Communication should belch out Blasphemy and Profaneness Oaths and Curses Ribaldrie and Reviling and all kind of rotten speeches like an open Sepulcher That an heart which was made for heavenly meditations and for intimate communion and converse with God should now entertain none but hellish affections and be a sink and charnel house of impure Lusts If we should here descend to a more particular disquisition and consider The uncleanness of our Original from fallen-Adam by whom we have been sold as Bond-men under sin Rom. 7. 14. For none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean Job 14. 4. Job 25 4. The uncleanness of our Nature and Constitution by nature Children of wrath No good thing dwelling in us As contrary to the holy Will of God as Darkness to light as full of Evil as the Sea of water Set on fire by a hell of corruption James 3.6 Exactly contrary to the Law of God as appeareth by comparing the strict demands of the one Gen. 3. 10. with the thorow depravation of the other Gen. 6. 5. The uncleanness of our Thoughts and secret Affections which arise continually as sparkles out of a stirred furnace Vain thoughts which tend to no good Jer. 4. 14. Wicked impure Thoughts very gall and bitterness Acts 8. 22 23. The uncleanness of our words not only idle words Mat. 12. 36. but rotten and unsavory Eph. 4. 29. The uncleanness of our Actions that immense Colluvies of Impieties against God Unrighteousness against men Intemperance against our selves Hainous in Quality Measureless in Quantity Sands for number Mountains for weight attended with multitudes of dolefull aggravations The uncleanness of our services and Iniquity of our holy things Such considerations as these sanctified by Evangelical Grace would much conduce to our Humiliation and work in us these three fruits and evidences thereof 1. A Godly sorrow so called by the Apostle because it sets the soul God-ward Cain Judas Felix sorrowed but they ran from God But Godly sorrow carries the soul closer unto God As a ship in a tempest ventures not to any shore but gets further into the Sea so the soul when it is humbled by God betakes not it self unto any carnal shore but still runs closer into him 2. A Justifying of God ascribing to him the glory of his Righteousness if he should condemn us and of his Mercy that he doth absolve us Psalm 51. 4. Daniel 9. 7 8 9. 3. A self-judging and subscribing to our Condemnation saying Amen unto the curse Deut. 27. 15. If I judge my selfe God can reverse my Judgement as the Superiour Judicatory can the Act of the Inferiour But if I stay till God judge me all the world cannot null or avoid his As St. Austin saith of the poor Publican Ipse sibi judex erat ut Deus liberaret ipse accusabat ut ille defenderet He judged and accused himself that God might deliver and defend him Bonum Judicium saith Bernard quod me illo districto divinoque judicio subducit abscondit Volo vultui irae judicatus praesentari non judicandus This is a good Judgement indeed which withdraws and hides me from the severe Judgement of God I tremble to fall into the hands of the living God Let me be presented before his wrath as judged already not as to be judged by him II. The next Duty is Prayer without which Humiliation is but a sinking under God not a seeking unto him The very Heathen betook themselves unto this Sanctuary in times of trouble ut pacem Dei exposcerent by this mighty Engine God hath been moved to hold his hand to repent of purposed to revoke denounced Judgements Vincit invincibilem Ligat Omnipotentem 1. By this we honour God in acknowledging him the fountain of all our Good the Inflicter of all Evill the Avenger of all sin that we have to do with him in all our sufferings Creatures but the Rod he the

not any order or degree of men which have not been shaken with these Earth-quakes O how deep is our stupidity if we do not all of us analyze and resolve our sufferings into their proper principles ours sins and Gods Displeasure If we have only howled vnder them and see not Gods Providence in them ordering the sins of men unto our Humiliation If we know them only naturally by their smart to the flesh and not spiritually by their influence on the Conscience If we censure others and absolve our selves If our sufferings harden and enrage us in animosities against men but do not meeken and melt us under the holy tryals of God Let us therefore labour to find out our sins by our Sufferings the cloud of wrath rising out of the sea of lust Let us search and try our wayes and since we are living men not complain of the punishment of our sins be not as Adamants Rocks Oakes which blowes waves winds break not move not bend not Make use of our sufferings to review our sins and to know our Duty what we should haply have done and did not in the day of our prosperity before God laid us aside what the Controversie was which God had against us in our Sufferings what the Duties are which he requireth of us in our restitution The Prophets staffe did no good to the dead child till he came himself Judgements do nothing till God follow them with his Craces Chastisements never mend us till they Teach us Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest O Lord and teachest him out of thy Law Psalm 94. 12. Till we see his name and hear his voice in them Mic. 6. 9. Till we take notice of his Justice preparing the whale that hath s vallowed us Jon 1. 17. Bidding S●imei curse 2 Sam. 16. 10. Giving a charge to the Assyrian Isa. 10. 6. This will make us dumb when we consider that it is God that doth it Psalm 39. 9. And now that the Cup hath gone round and God hath by his Righteous providence prevented our revenge and done that by the strange vicissitudes of his justice in a wise and holy manner which if he had left us to do in our owne cases would possibly have been done with folly and fury Let us conclude that the Lord having judged us all himselfe we should make it our work not so much to look back with revengefull as to look forward with Healing and closing Resolutions We have been like wanton children which fall out in a family now our father hath whipped us round that should make us returne to our fraternal agreements againe 2. The Lord hath variety of Judgements whereby to reduce froward and stubborn sinners can punish them in the Heavens over them in the Earth under them in their bowels within them can beset them upward downward outward inward and make a Net and Chain and Hedge of afflictions to shut them in And to fence up their way that they cannot pass Job 3. 23. Job 19. 8. When he will plead he will take away all Refuge and make every Region towards which we look minister Despair They shall look upward and they shall look unto the earth and behold Trouble and Darkness and Dimness of Anguish Isa. 8. 21 22. If they look without behold a Sword if within behold Famine and Pestilence Levit. 26 25. Jer. 21. 4. 6 Ezek. 7. 15. Evil which they shall not be able to escape or go forth of Jer. 11. 11. When men multiply sins the Lord usually multiplyeth Judgements till he either bend by Repentance or break by Destruction When Cleanness of teeth Blasting and Mildew Pestilence and Sword the Judgements of Sodome and Gomorah did not prevail with Israel to return then he threathneth final wrath Therefore Thus will I do unto thee Amos 4. 6. 12. Which Thus in the Prophet Amos seemeth to me to be the same with Lo Ammi in the Prophet Hosea an utter rejection of them from being the Lords people Hos. 1. 9. Four times after one another doth the Lord threaten to punish his people seven times more for their sins if they walk contrary unto him Levit. 26. 18 21 24 28. Philosophers use to reckon but eight steps to the highest and most intense degree of a quality but the wrath of God is represented by eight and twenty degrees unto us 1. The Methode of God in these various Judgements usually is 1. He begins at the outward man exercising a people many times with change of Rods which is ever a sign of Anger in the Father and of stubbornness in the Son 2. He proceeds to the soule by smiteing that revealing his wrath subducting his peace implanting his terrors causing guilt and fear to gripe and seize on the conscience called Breaking of bones Psal. 51. 8. drinking up of spirits Iob. 6. 4. A wounded spirit Prov. 18. 14. If the Lord should give a secure sinner who now haply thinks himself alive and safe upon the mistaken apprehensions of Mercy a full view of the filthiness and sense of the Heaviness of any one atrocious sin whereof he stands guilty it would make him a terrour to himself willing to exchange his burden for the weight of a Rock or Mountain O my broken bones saith one Psalm 51. 8. O my withered heart saith another Psalm 102. 3 4. O the distracting terrours of God saith a third Psalm 88. 15. O the intoxicating Arrows of the Almighty saith a fourth Job 6. 4. Thus the Lord can make a man a Magor Missabib a very fury and fiend unto himself by arming his own conscience against him And if the Sergeant be so formidable what a fearfull thing is it to fall into the hands of the Living God Against whose wrath all the Honours of the world all the Wealth and greatness which a thousand Kingdomes could heap upon a man could be no more a protection than a robe of beaten gold could be to one that is cast into a furnace of fire Knowing therefore the terrour of the Lord let us be perswaded to be beware of provoking his wrath by any presumptuous sin 3. Towards obdurate sinners the Lord many times deals in a more fearfull manner sealing them up under hardness of heart a spirit of slumber a Reprobate sense a seared conscience to be led blind-fold by Satan till destruction unawares overtake them So it is said of the old world that notwithstanding the preaching of Noah who by preparing an Ark condemned the world they yet knew not till the flood came and took them all away Mat. 24. 39. Because I have purged thee saith the Lord and thou wast not purged thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more Ezek. 24. 13. Ephraim is joyned to Idols let him alone Hos. 4. 17. Let him that is filthy be filthy still Rev. 22. 11. Now since the Lord hath such variety of Judgements that we can never out-sin his wrath Let us be deeply humbled for our pride who have