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	son_n	89,234	5	6.5393	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B06797	Two sermons concerning nature and grace. Preach'd at White-hall, April, 1699. / By E. Young, Fellow of Winchester-College ...	Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.	1700 (1700)	Wing Y71; ESTC R41169	21,820	61

gifts unto your Children how much more will your heavenly Father give give what give good gifts so the Antithesis requires and so one would think the Expression should run but instead of this it runs thus How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him Implying that the Holy Spirit is equivalent to all other good Gifts nay as much exceeding them as the Love and Power of God exceeds that of Man And therefore however we may of esteem Long Life and Prosperous Fortunes yet so indifferent are they in the Event That God bestows them without any Indication either of his Love or Hatred as that Passage of Solomon is to be interpreted Eccles 9.1 For God bestows them not only upon the Good but upon the Evil and the Unthankful upon those that seek them not from him upon those that do not acknowledge them as received at his hands and finally upon those that are never the better for having received them as will appear at the adjusting of Accounts But on the other hand sanctifying Grace is a Pearl of greater Price than to be cast away upon the Regardless This is a Certain Benefit and a lasting Good and therefore God disposes it upon another sort of Condition viz. to them that ask him i. e. to them that wisely estimate and worthily value and earnestly desire this excellent Gift And indeed when we consider the Duty of Prayer qualify'd with those Circumstances that the Holy Scripture does require viz. That it must be Instant Fervent Importunate Violent we may conclude that Prayer it self is as certain a Proof of the Communications of Grace as it is a Means to procure them For if we must pray Instantly Fervently Importunately Violently what are the Things we must pray for in this manner No worldly Need can justifie such a Desire Our Desire of Life or any of its Accommodations in such a measure would be Immoderate Impatient and Sinful and therefore it is that Submission and Resignation is prescribed to our Requests in respect of all these things Grace therefore is the only Blessing that can be worthy such a measure of Importunity This alone we may desire instantly and with Impatience of Denial and yet not exceed Grace is that Kingdom of Heaven that suffereth Violence and the Violent take it by force In this Office of Prayer and in an Endeavour of Christian-living suitable and comporting with it without which Comportment the Efficacy of our Prayers must necessarily be voided I say in there two Offices of praying for God's Grace and walking in the Road of God's Grace consists the Practice of our Dependance upon him The Fruits whereof I shall next enquire into and shew that through this Dependance upon God which our present Weakness and Insufficiency enforces Man reaps greater Advantages from his present State than could have been look'd for had he been restored to the State of Primitive Perfection And to prove This it will be Argument enough if I shew that Man has now Provision made 1. For a safer Vertue and 2. For a more commendable Vertue and 3. For a more excellent Reward than otherwise he could have had 1. Man has now Provision made for a safer Vertue than Adam had when he was first formed Adam was left in the hands of his own Counsel And so the Author of Ecclus tells us Chap. 15.24 where he says God made Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from or in the beginning and left him in the hands of his own Counsel c. For if we interpret this Text to mean that Man has Counsel Wisdom Liberty or Strength to chuse and pursue all that is necessary to Godliness I am sure it can be apply'd to no man since the Fall and this the whole Current of Sacred Writ makes demonstrable But Adam was furnished with such degrees of Perfection that it was fit be should be left in the hands of his own Counsel But withal we know that Adam fell under his own hands and after he was once fall'n after he had darken'd his Soul weaken'd and poison'd his Nature by giving up Reason to the power of Appetite he must necessarily have sunk under the dominion of Sin he must necessarily have grown more and more indulging careless desperate and without thoughts or power of Repenting as the Case of the fall'n Angels was had it not been for the Grace of that Covenant which was founded purely upon the occasion of his Fall For all the subsequent Power that Adam had to please God and to walk as a Man converted from the errour of his way from that time forward issued not at all from the Strength of his Nature as if Recovered by the means of Reflexion Nature was as much indisposed and insufficient to produce such a Reconciling Change in him as it is at this Day in any of his Posterity And accordingly we may observe from the History That before the New Covenant was pronounc'd and ratified in the Promised Seed there was no footstep of Repentance that appear'd either in Adam or Eve but merely a shifting off their Crime as if in Design to preclude their Repentance and therefore it appears that all the subsequent Power that Adam had whereby to Repent and to please God did issue purely from the Succour of that Grace which God vouchsased him in Compassion to his new-contracted Disorder and upon which he might now rest for the Course of his future Obedience with much more Security than he could upon his former Native Perfections Now to argue home to my Purpose Let us suppose that after Adam had fall'n yet this notwithstanding God had ordain'd that Original Uprightness should have equally descended upon all his Posterity yet we must allow that any one of his Posterity though born with the same degrees of Uprightness that he was might yet have been foil'd by the Wiles of the Tempter and so have fall'n as well as he did Now had they so fall'n I mean fall'n only personally and for themselves had they so fall'n and in the mean while the Covenant of Grace not been founded as it was only founded upon the Account of the Propagation of Sin how could any such have ever recover'd to that State from which they fell or indeed to any Degree of Acceptance with God Their Case must have been as desperate as that of the fall'n Angels was before they would have was now made natural to them and aimed at nothing more than to enjoy the Pleasures of farther Depravation Whereas on the other hand according to the present state of things and for the succour of our Nature as it is now infirm there is a Provision made through the New Covenant for a safer adherence to Vertue and such a Provision as every Christian may have the Benefit of unless it be in the case of affected Slothfulness and wilful Indulgence in Sin Sin indeed may more easily make its first Breaches upon us by reason of

makes us better must be a superiour and better Agent than our selves 'T is true that though we are orn Ignorant we can make our selves Skilful we can acquire Arts and Sciences by our own Diligence and Study But the Case is not the same in respect of Goodness We can acquire Arts and Sciences because we lie under no Connate Indisposition to that Acquirement for Nature though it be corrupt yet still it is curious and busie after Knowledge but to Goodness we have naturally an Indisposition that is Invincible Lusts within and Temptations without set up such a firm Confederacy against it as we are never able to surmount in our own Strength And therefore it is evident that in order to save Mankind the Holy Spirit vouchsafed to engage in the Work of Sanctification as well as the Eternal Son did in that of Redemption from the Beginning of the World When we do well it is the Assistance of God that improvers us to concur in the Act He removes the Hinderances He restrains our opposing Lusts He moves our Will and draws us to it And though because of the subsequent Concurrence the Act is graciously imputed Ours that so we may be intitled to the Reward yet still the Power is God's Hereupon it is that the Apostle arguing against that mischief that necessarily follows upon Humane Confidence thus expresses himself 1 Cor. 10.12 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall Upon which Text a Critick of Name has given his Opinion That the Participle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Redundant and has no peculiar Signification because the Sense of the Place is no more than this Let him that standeth take heed least he fall But it seems to me rather that this Criticism is Redundant and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 has not only a Signification there but the most Emphatical one that can be imagined For take notice That he that thinketh he standeth in Goodness does but think so For no Man stands in Goodness he is only upheld and supported there and graciously kept upright Wherefore he that thinketh he stands is for that very Reason more obnoxious to fall And that the Apostle means no less in that place let him be his own Interpreter Rom. 11.20 where he expresses the Manner how even the best of Men do stand viz. Thou standest by Faith Now he that stands by Faith stands not by Himself because Faith is properly a Recumbency or Rest upon another But to make the matter clearer the Apostle illustrates it by a Resemblance ver 17. wherein he instructs us That a Good Man stands as the Branch of a wild Olive does when it is grafted into the Good Olive Tree and that is not in its own Vertue but in Vertue of the Root and such a Root as is naturally not it s own It is Remarkable that the Apostle in that Passage calls a Bad Man a Wild Olive Tree a Wild Olive Tree not barely a Branch but a Tree which having a Root of its own supports it self and stands in its own Strength and brings forth its own Fruit And so does Man in respect of the wild and sour Fruit of an ill Conversaction He is a Tree has a Root of his own and Sap and Vegetation and Seminal Fruitfulness and Power to bring it forth But in respect of Good he is only a Branch and all his Fruitfulness and all his Support depend upon the Influence and Communications of God You may see both the Doctrine and the Illustration of it yet more fully exprest by our Saviour in the beginning of the 15th Chapter of St. John We may therefore look upon Sampson as a Common Emblem of the Dispensations of Grace and all Men are fortify'd in their Soul after the same manner that he was in his Body For Example His Strength lay not in his Sinews but was extrinsical in his Locks though thence communicated to his Sinews And so our Moral Strength lies not in our Soul for let Reason and Conscience be never so well awaken'd and our Will never so well inclin'd and Practice and Custom contribute all they can yet still our Soul has no stock of Strength intrinsick to it self by which it can sustain it self Let the Supplies of Grace be once cut off as it happen'd to Sampson's Locks and that moment the Best become weak as other Men. Philosophy deceives us in respect of Religious Habits There is no Habit of that kind difficultly movable from the Subject by reason of any Strength that Practice introduceth into the Subject it self Our Facility of Acting Religiously is both acquired and maintained by the Grace of God and that Grace being once suspended the Habit sinks in an instant Hezekiah was an excellent Man scarce is so much said of the Piety of any Man in Sacred Writ as of his and yet upon a sudden in a Transaction with the Embassadors of Babylon he behav'd himself both vainly and profanely insomuch that the Text says Wrath came upon him for it and by that Wrath he was sensible of his Fault and thereby brought back again to his former Integrity Now to let us understand how such a disagreeing Failure came to find place in the course of such an excellent Life the Holy Pen-man has taken care to tell us expresly 2 Chron. 32.34 that in that matter of the Embassadors God left Hezekiah to himself to try him and to prove what was in his heart that is To shew him to himself The very same was Peter's Case How Pious was he in the House How Couragious in the Garden And yet in the Hall both a Coward and a Traditor Now the Reason of all was Because his Master had for that Interval left him to himself For the Text says that When the Lord turned and looked upon Peter that is look'd upon him with an Operative Compassion Peter recovered his Strength and exerted it in an immediate Repentance and held it perseveringly to a glorious end Lord what is Man what is he without thee The Lord has told us plain enough in these Instances What he is Ev'n a thing of nought Let us imagine a Man to be Swimming and because he could not Swim without it to be supported by the Chin To make such a Man sink there needs no dipping him no laying Weights upon him no hampering or entangling his Limbs withdraw but the Hand and he necessarily sinks of himself And in like manner To make to Best Man fall there needs no doing him any Wrong no wounding his Faculties no maiming his Judgment no perverting his Will no inflaming his Appetites no heightening his Temptations Let God barely withdraw his Supplies and leave him to himself that is Permit him to the Power of his Natural Affections which Affections Grace only convers and restrains it never extinguishes during the course of this Life I say Let a Man in the firmest state of Vertue be barely permitted by