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	holy_a	place_n	5,553	5	4.7190	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64240	Impostor magnus, or The legerdemain of Richard Delamain now preacher in the city of Hereford. Being a narrative of his life and doctrine since his first coming into that county. Faithfully collected and published by one that will assert the truth of each particular. Yay.	Taylor, Silas, 1624-1678.	1654 (1654)	Wing T553A; ESTC R219169	24,689	35

licentiousness and prophanness for if we were not bound to keep close to a known rule but left at liberty to follow the dictates of our own carnal appetites to live and practise accordingly if religion be some thing at large not bounded or bonded if it were only in this or that mans particular liberty and in pretence to become all things to all men and this liberty to be explained by the respective owners and pretenders then sarewell to the very genuine sense of the word Religion and to all civil society to oppose them in their wicked wils is an infringement of their liberty and what can be else expected but a meer confusion in Government and propriety which is his longed for expectation knowing the best fishing is in the muddiest waters But that I may not long detain you from a Sermon which I know you expect from our profound Doctor though as yet no Minister for Crab-like he crawled backwards into these degrees first a Preacher and afterwards as he saith ordained I shall here present you with the Sceleron of one of his Sermons which your imagination may help out because having such rich conceits and far fetched novelties for the bare-heads you may easily believe the covering was not much different he believes not the litteral meaning of the Scripture and therefore allegorizeth the three first verses of the third Chapter of Matthew whence he would have us note that the voice of John the Baptist crying in the wilderness was the incomes of God into the wilderness of men That those Incomes of God 1. Do make the ascension of Christ within us for Christ is dead and buried in the Soul till these Incomes come 2. Are an exceeding weight of glory 3. Are a Soul-saving glory 4. Do set a Christian on the shoulders of Christ and then he may see compleatly 5. Do bless the Soul 6. Do deliver the Soul 7. Do deaden all things to the Soul beside God so that nothing but the Lord shall live there Then makes some shift I know not how to fall aboard with heaven and tells you if you can understand him for I confess I cannot That Heaven is an estate of God nothing to be seen but God and when thus I see God then Heaven is manifested It contents a carnal Christian to have Heaven without and Christ without c. but a spiritual Christian looks for God within and heaven within That there is no heaven but in the hearts of the Godly Hogs-wash nor hell but in the Hearts of the wicked so that a man converted is hell changed into heaven That Hell fire is nothing but the Spirits consuming and burning up of Lusts c. Now I hope for my repetition I shall be excused from my Exposition and how would you have me expound that which I do not understand I confess my ignorance and will leave it to that generation whom he imagines have a more glorious dispensation above Scriptures and Ordinances or else to some that understand him for he knew no other death burial or ascention of Christ nor heaven nor hell but in the Soul and how can you expect other from him At other times that he might shake and overturn the basis and foundations of the Faith once delivered to his Disciples it was his use in his familiar and private converse to low the seed of the Doctrine of the Seekers from that place of Scripture If ye are risen with Christ Col. 3.1 seek the things that are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of his Father making the whole intention and scope of the holy Spirit a notional Allegory and holding out from thence that in matters of Doctrine and Tenents there was nothing certain especially what was at any distance from his way and that indeed was his practise with his Neophytes or Novices to preach to them of shakings of Mount Slon and Sinai and what is written by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews yet once more and I shake not only the earth but the Heavens you may easily interpret it his way considering his design of beating Christians off from duties and his imagination of the locallity of heaven and earth to be the souls and hearts of people by this he endeavored to shake men from off their confidence in Scripture-rule or way then putting them upon a seeking way and to whom should such as were thus in their foundations shaken have recourse but to such as were able to shake them and so as it was said of the Pharisees of old may be said of our new one Math. 23. that they compass Sea and Land to make one Proselyte and when he is made they make him twofold more the childe of hell then themselves When he had tempered them to this pass they were sit subjects to receive any impression and then he makes known to them that there are nor either three or two persons in the God-Head and was much offended at the word Trinity not understanding that it signified a Three but it is the practise of Impostors to speak evil of those things which they know not Jude not minding what the Scripture saith that there are three which bare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy-Ghost 1 Joh. 5.7 and these three are one here is Trinity in Unity but it is no marvel that he that spake so slightly of the God Head should deny the holy Trinity he that dare contrary to the plain words of the Scripture which saith God is light and in him is no darkness at all belch out this blasphemy That God is darkness and prosecute his horrid positions with pretended reason and with telling his reprovers they wanted understanding can you imagine he would stick at any eeror yet favor him a little further and he will tell you Christ is Faith and Christ is Repentance That the world sees Christ till the Spirit comes and then the light of the Spirit puts out the eye of the world That external administrations shall be shortly abolished That the body shall not rise again and that the humane nature of Christ did not rise again he may as well say so as deny the history contrary to those places of Scripture which affirm Christs resurrection and plainly say that Christ is now risen from the dead and become the first fruits of those that slept and those many undenyable arguments wherewith the Apostle Paul doth syllogize the Corinthians into an understanding and belief of the resurrection 1 Cor. 15. in the fifteenth Chapter of his first Epistle He commends to their readings the inexplicable Treatises of Chimital Divinity written by the German Doctor Behmen therein admiring what neither Writer Reader or Hearer could understand or make sense of much applauding his Tincture his Ignis fatuus and Turba magna Reader these were all as simple as they stand here terms of Divinity there was another such-piece of extasied non-sense written by a

almost in the Threshold caused him to have dashed his foot to the stumbling and undoing of his hopes for by this you may plainly perceive him a designed Temporizer who for his gain could have become a downright Legalist as well as a high flown Notionist and in few words to give you the print of his foot by which you may imagine his stature Gain was his Godliness his Religion it was his God his whole aym and he resolved which by his leaving his small place in the Custom-house you may perceive to obtain it per fas aut nefas holding that Heterodoxal Maxim for his first point of Doctrine dulcis odor lucri ex re qualibet this enforced him to leave Bredwardine awhile and go with M. H. to Webley where by his means having insinuated into the acquaintance of Mrs. K. one nearly related to that Family at Bredwardine then living at a place about two miles from Webley who out of her tender affection to good imagining by his carriage and demeanour some superlative knowledge of Gods wayes at least some eminent sanctity in himself gave him countenance and you may see here he first makes practise with women and widdows where fishing with the bait of Socinianism and perceiving it taking prosecuted his fortune eagerly making use of all advantages for leading of some Captive with his Tenents and absurdities and imagining his interest did much consist in the getting into favor with the old Gentlewoman at Bredwardine because there was the best quarters it being the nature of such deceivers much to mind their bellies For what they naturally know as bruit beasts in those things they corrupt themselves Iude 10. and are the black spots in the feasts of charity and because of the eminency of the place and Family which by the means of these his forementioned acquaintance he with some labor at last to his content atchieved causing in some an admiration of his Doctrine which he now holds forth I dare not say an approbation of it I know it is Satans Master-peice to lay stumbling blocks before the feet of the Saints and if it be possible to cause such as have been renowned for their profession in the strictest wayes of Godliness to be the Antesignani and chiefest abettors of Heresie and error to make such whose light should be set as it were on an hill who should by their lives and conversations be the flaming Beacons of Good works before men that they seeing them may glorifie our Father that is in Heaven to cause them in a more especial manner to be the greedy examples of falling and sucking in those damnable positions of Christian Lethargy Here now this ungodly man having crept in unawares spends his time betwixt the two Families instructing them with his depraved principles and all such as came unto them either out of humanity as to visits or out of the instigation of an itching ear to hear novelties of which last sort more especially then others some were caught and did embrace Doctrines of the Devil Tenents that now stink in the Nosethrils of some of his admirers worse then his breath doth to such as approach him he laboured to seduce some of which I shall now give you a sight of though I know that errors like oaths in telling stories better concealed then repeated yet because he goe's on still making practise with deceits deceiving and being deceived aspiring to eminent places there to make shipwrack of Faith and a good conscience not only in himself but to others insulting over the Ministers who are laborious and painful intermedling in civil affairs in which he is nothing concerned despising powers and authorities and all this and much more under the cloak of Religion and conscience this is therefore to undeceive such who by his fair perswasions may be drawn into the deceit of believing his lyes for having as in a draught or picture seen his carriages and life they may with little straining their Logick believe that out of such an impure polluted puddle cannot proceed the limpid-living streams of the water of Life that whilest himself is the very Epitome of Hypocrisie and Herefie and the abstract of baseness and leudness he can in the mean time preach to others by his example the Doctrine of Truth holyness and sincerity That which he now buckled himself unto when he was received into favor at Bredwardine was that common maxim which all Impostors use to despise Dominions and speak evil of dignities to decry all those that may by any means be a remora in his proceedings either by authority Doctrine or disputes and to that end he declaims against the Ministry in general as if the sins and faylings of particulars were annexed as inseparable companions to the calling even so because some have received poyson in their meat it were necessary or reasonable we should wholly desist from the use of it Here begins a loud invective against them for many crimes which they are guilty of and among the rest scorning them for their receiving Tithes though since he hath received them and threatned trouble to those that did not conform and perswades his Disciples to avoid the disgrace and foyls which else he and they were subject to in disputes that what he said could not be understood be any but such who were under the the same dispensation as he was truly I think so too and in imition of their Master you should have ignorant silly women tell men both learned and knowing That they could not understand those high mysteries because of their carnality and further tells them that what was nonsence to all people out of his way was the very sense of the Spirit to him by which he seemed to anticipate and confute all controversies that might arise and which was a very succinct method of satisfying all questions and doubts and further that what he delivered though it were seemingly contradictory to the received truth and though he could not prove it out of the written Word of God yet it was to be received as the immediate dictate of the Spirit He slighted and scorned at duties as performed by such who were in a lower form and should in time have greater light And upon that place Rev. 3.20 Behold I stand at the door and knock if any man hear my voice and open the door c. he held forth that the Ordinances of God were the door that they do keep Christ at a distance from the Soul and keep him in darkness or dark to us was not this a notable ingredient for his mass of errors not valuing the Spirits injunctions of praying continually and rejoycing alwayes exhorting rebuking c. in season and out of season Tells us that the Scriptures were but the mind of the Spirit in several administrations and that there were several dispensations of God Of Adam Of Noah or Abraham Of Moses Here is strange stuff Of John the Baptist Of Christ Of fire burning up