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	scripture_n	10,125	5	6.0328	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91430	The copy of a letter written by Mr. Thomas Parker, pastor of the church of Newbury in New-England, to his sister, Mrs Elizabeth Avery, sometimes of Newbury in the county of Berks, touching sundry opinions by her professed and maintained. Novemb. 22. 1649. imprimatur John Downame.	Parker, Thomas, 1595-1677.	1649 (1649)	Wing P475; Thomason E584_3; ESTC R206220	9,411	20

your countenance as iron and be not so weak and childish and flexible as to yield to your own destruction say as that worthy Convert did unto his following old society when he turning said Ego non sum Ego I am not the man that I was Thirdly this will be another block in the way That your Opinions are in print But Sister alas alas by reason of your Book you are as I am credibly informed printed by Name in the Catalogue of the Heretiques of this time as one of the infamous Apostates Redeem your name and credit amongst Saints which now is lost by protesting against that horrid Book and by humbling your self for an attempt above your gifts and Sex Fourthly there is yet another block or hindrance to your return which I doubt will be stronger then any before-mentioned whereby Satan hath you as it were in chains of iron and hopeth so to hold you that you shall never be able to get out But yet the Lord Jesus Christ is able to break the fetters of iron and chains of brass and therefore hoping in his Mercy I will say something Satan will tell you dear Sister That Your Opinions are upon your Conscience and you have given way unto them upon Conscience and you have had long and sweet and heavenly raptures in the way of them and have put off thereby all your former doubts and fears and servility Will you deny your Opinions so long professed will you go against your Conscience therein at least with a doubting Conscience will you return to your former fears and slaveries and call again your state into question Will you now become a creeper who were in way of your Opinions advanced unto Heaven yea Will you now become meaner and lower then the meaner sort of Christians by professing your self to have all this while been miscarried and misguided by an evil Spirit O Sister you have gone by fancy and not by Reason by an ungrounded apprehension and not by Scripture by a Conscience without a Rule made by Conceit and not by the Word of God ground your conscience by the word and harden your Spirit like steel to break that conscience that hath been grounded upon vanity upon conceit and fancy and imagination upon which you did not ground your conscience before you fell neither your worthy Father nor any of the holy Martyrs which are surely gone to Heaven as the Apocalyps doth testifie All Scriptures are evidently against you and the profession of all the Church before you If Satan hath made his pills of death sweet unto you and hath covered them with delight and made you vainly to believe That it is God and Christ that dwelleth in you working such heavenly refreshments will you take them down unto your destruction The longer you have yielded so much the more hasty be to break off lest you be confirmed in a pernicious way Fear not to return to the truth it is better to go in way of truth with some doubts and fears then in way of Heresie to perish And the more low and mean Christian you shall be in your own eyes the higher shall you be in the eyes of God and of all good Christians Some haste too fast in putting off their fears let God put them off in way of truth and Scripture or not at all It is often best for Christians to be under some fears that they may be humble that they may fight and overcome and be crowned that in way of Mortification they may make their Calling and Election sure and if you shall return all Saints will meet you and rejoyce with you yea the Angels will rejoyce for you and Christ himself For this my childe was dead but she is alive again she was lost but she is found again Fifthly Satan may say unto you that If you shall renounce your Opinions you shall have no ground to stand upon you shall justly question whether you had ever Grace or no you shall despair But Sister you had well-grounded Assurance before you fell into these Errors I am witness my self thereof to whom you writ to that effect A Saint may fall and grosly be deceived for a time onely he shall return again he may not be dead but asleep onely So I do perswade my self of you though I have written somewhat roughly to awaken you the more O that I might hear that you were returned you have no cause to despair but onely to be humbled and this I hope is the onely end of the Divine permission Return to your former Principles dear Sister with confession and repentance therein live and dye and I doubt not but that you shall live with Christ for ever but if you never had grace yet there is no cause of despairing forasmuch as grace is freely offered at all times to them that do come in by Faith and true Repentance through the blood of Christ onely it must be such a Faith and such a Repentance whereby we cleave to God in Christ as the chiefest good and in the way of sincere endeavor of all Obedience and of forsaking every opposite thing You cannot now but take so large a Letter from a Brother so defective and weak in sight and so much otherwise employed to be an Argument of great desire of the welfare of your soul and of the importance and necessity of your condition The Lord God grant for Christs sake that my labor may not be in vain Salute all my friends as named my dear Brother your Husband thanking you for all kindenesses I rest Newbury Novem. 1648. Your loving Brother THO PARKER FINIS

there is no light in them Isa 8.20 And doth not all Scripture plainly affirm and the Churches and Martyrs and Witnesses of Truth all along affirm That Christ hath a true humane body He could not properly arise nor ascend but in his flesh and is he not for ever God revealed in the flesh 1 Tim. 3.16 and after his Glorification is he not called 1 Tim. 2.5 The man Christ Jesus and the Rev. 13.5,6 Tabernacle of God by reason of the flesh Rev. 13.5,6 and in whom the Godhead is said to dwell bodily for the same cause Col. 1. is he not said to have a life given him for ever and ever Isa 53.10 Psal 21.4 Rev. 1.18 And if he had not carried his real body into Heaven he would have left it in the Grave behinde he would not have eaten and drunken in it for to shew the reality of his body and that he was no spirit as the Disciples imagined he would not have offered his body to be handled the print of the nails to be felt for the proof of the truth and reality thereof And that he shall visibly appear again unto the world it appeareth Because the same body he carried up with the same he must return again to Judgement Psa 110.1 Acts 3. and therefore it is said Acts 17.31 He hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world by that MAN whom he hath ordained It is a sick and irksom labor to multiply places about a point so clear But what Scripture or Reason hath shewed you That his second coming is his coming in his Saints a mystical coming The plain words of Scripture are ever against you neither can they be applied otherwise then by making them a nose of wax This Jesus whom you have seen going into heaven shall so come as ye have seen Acts 1. I saw a white throne and one sate thereon Rev. 20.11 Behold he cometh with clouds Rev. 1. Matth. 24. 25. If you turn these things into Allegories nothing can be certain And would not Christ and his Apostles have told us so in some place or other if this coming were onely figurative adde That if this be figurative other things annexed are also figurative and nothing plain and this were to make a chaos and confusion of the Scriptures It grieveth me to spend time when matters are so evident Of like nature is that which you grosly hold that There is no Resurrection of the body Read 1 Cor. 15. Dan. 12.2 Rev. 20.12,13,14 It irketh me to write in such cases Whereas you say The Saints are Christ one with God their Being God What godly ear can hear such things without defiance and abomination If Saints are so if you are so then are you without sin as Christ Omnipotent Omniscient Infinite to be worshipped and adored as God and Christ is I will spit at this and say no more I understand also that you can determine of the holy Scriptures that much of them is written with a humane spirit can take or take not for Scripture or meaning of Scripture onely by the Rule of an apprehension and Revelation of the Spirit which you suppose your self to be guided by and to have more of then the Apostles had The same Spirit which told you that much of the Scripture was written with a humane Spirit may haply tell you at another time that all the Scripture is written with a humane Spirit that there is no certainty therein yield to one yield to all But we know that the Prophets and Apostles did all write as guided by the Spirit of God 2 Pet. 1. ult 2 Pet. 3. Joh. 17. Rev. 21. He that receiveth you receiveth me John 13. Now over and above all this there are other horrid things in your Book which I have not seen and Satan hath been let loose to shut you up and to imprison you in your monstrous Heresies by gates and bars and to fetter and chain you up that all means might be frustrate whereby we might have hope to bring you forth For if any thing from Scripture or Reason is brought against your Opinions which you cannot answer you can shift it off with this That you do not so apprehend thinking your apprehension to be infallible and above Reason or Scripture How came you by such an apprehension By what means came you to know that it is infallibly directed or may you not be praefident in thinking it to be so when it is not But surely no Saint or Martyr since the Apostles ever challenged to themselves such an apprehension for ought I finde And we are all commanded to regulate our apprehensions by the Scripture and not to judge the Scriptures by ungrounded apprehensions Thy word is a light unto my paths Psal 119. 2 Pet. 2. Mat. 4. for otherwise any Heretique may justifie himself by his apprehension and there would be no way to confute Error The Apostles themselves though infallibly directed yet would subject their Doctrine to the tryal of the Scripture as in the Bereans and prove it unto others by the Scripture Rom. 9. Gal. 4. Furthermore in these days we cannot tell That our apprehensions are guided by the Spirit but by the light of Scripture You will say It is so with you but how will you prove it to your self or others why may it not be the Spirit of Satan which you think to be the Spirit of God I dare be bold to say It is the Spirit of Satan and not of God that so directeth apprehensions as not under the direction of the Word Dear Sister with whom I have had sweet communion in the ways of God let us not now part at last divided in Faith Eternally divided Were you not in the Faith before you fell into these Opinions and did you not then write unto me that you had full Assurance Is all then lost and nothing that was before that you have changed your Faith and your Religion Is the Doctrine of your Reverend Father and of Dr. Twisse and the Doctrine of the holy Martyrs now at last discovered to be Error whom the Apocalyps doth expresly stile the Witnesses of Truth Whither will you run dear Sister from your Parents Friends Church Christ God and life Eternal Have you no more strength but at the first assault to yield the Bucklers and to give over your Faith so long professed at the first push If you had not Reason enough your self yet why did you not first enquire of those that might have holpen you I would rather a hundred times you had perished by the Sword then have thus faln dishonored God and your Profession and weakened the people of the Lord and shamed all your Friends and laid up treasures of Correction for your Posterity and put your self in a suspitious way at least of losing the heavenly Inheritance Let me tell you plainly I doubt there was some grievous sin at bottom as the Pride of Women or Spiritual Pride or something