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	soul_n	7,525	5	4.8126	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52856	The absolute and peremptory decree of election to eternal glory reprobated in a sermon preached before the university in Great St. Maries Church in Cambridge / by Robert Neville ...	Neville, Robert, 1640 or 1-1694.	1682 (1682)	Wing N518; ESTC R7829	14,617	38

Gods Grace and Mercy as a Mist before the Sun Let them therefore rowl away those Grave-stones they have pulled upon themselves by the strength of their phansie and imagination Which they will be the better enabled to Do if they will but consider that they who sincerely endeavour to please God and keep his Commandments have not the least ground from Scripture to suspect any secret Decree of Gods that shall cause their Ruin or Damnation and whatever the secret Decrees of God are concerning the Eternal state of men they must not be made by them the standard and rule either of their Duty or Comfort Let them not therefore search into Gods secret Decrees but his Revealed Laws and since he hath given them rules of Life which upon the severest penalties he requires them to Study and Practice let them not turn aside from these and make it their business to trace his Cabinet Counsels let them not gaze at the Stars to read their destiny and not look to but disregard their feet and by that negligence experiment the worst Fate they could have portended For I think we may say our wild fancies about Gods Decrees have in event Reprobated and Damned more than those Decrees upon which they are so willing to charge their ruin And as the thoughts of Gods Absolute Decree of Reprobation should not drive men into despair on the one hand so neither should the thoughts of their being chosen by Gods Absolute Decree of Election make them presumptuous on the other and this brings me to my II. USE or use of Reproof to those Predestinarians who think they are so fast ty'd to God by his Absolute Decree of Election to Eternal Glory and that they are such special Confidents and Favorites of Heaven that all their sins shall not be able to separate them from the Love and Favour of God they have through the false perspective of presumption seen their names written indelibly in the Book of Life and are therefore of opinion that all their Provocations and Rebellions against Heaven cannot disturb their Horoscope nor reverse their fatal and destin'd bliss and happiness and herein they resemble the Scholars oft Marcus in Irenaeus who pretended they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 naturally spiritual and that they could be no more blemisht or tainted by all the sins and debaucheries in the World than the Sun-beams can be prophaned or sullied by a Dunghill but let me tell those who have espoused this dangerous Opinion that continuance in sin and Gods favour are inconsistent that there is no Absolute Decree of the Almighties will secure Heaven to them their Holiness is the best security that they can give or God will take for it This is the Tenour of the Gospel and this is the summ of our Commission that are the Preachers of it We cannot give out Copies of Gods Decrees or give men an immediate Assurance of Heaven but we must proceed by a just inference from those Conditions and Qualifications which the Gospel expresses We search not the Records of Heaven but the Books of the Scripture whereby Isa 3.10 11. We may say to the Righteous that it shall be well with him and to the wicked that it shall be ill with him which is the same sense with that St. Augustin spake when he declaimed against the Fate and Necessity of the Stoicks (a) Deus Praedestinavit bonitati mercedem tribuere malum punire God hath Decreed to reward Goodness and punish wickedness If therefore you desire that Heaven and Happiness should make their approaches to you make you your approaches to God in Holiness Jam. 4.8 Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you This is the standing Law of Heaven and God will not recede one Iota or tittle from it For it is not because our Brains are filled with a strong Conceit of Gods Eternal Love to us or because we swell into a mighty bulk with aiery fancies and presumptions of our Election that we become the more dear and acceptable to God unless our sins sink as our Hopes keep up unless our sins Ebb as much as our Hopes do flow It is not a pertinacious imagination of our Names being enrolled in the Book of Life or of the Debt-books of Heaven being crossed that can Entitle us to Heaven Nor will the fancying our sins washt away with the blood of Christ whilst the foul stains thereof remain in our Souls make us ever the Cleaner he who thinks that God is so certainly espoused to his soul as to be bound to take it for better for worse being far from the Kingdom of God To which Kingdom that we may All at length arrive God preserve us all from this fatal and dangerous Opinion either of Absolute and Peremptory Election or Reprobation and this we beg of him for the sake of that Mediator whose Blood was a Propitiation for the sins of the Whole World to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all Honour and Glory and Praise FINIS Three Sermons lately published by the same Author and sold by Ben. Billingsley 1 A Sermon Preached before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of the City of London at Guild-hall 2 The necessity of Receiving the Holy Sacrament declared in a Sermon at a Conference of the several Ministers of the Deanry of Braughin in the County of Hertford appointed by the Right Reverend Father in God Henry Lord Bishop of London to be held at Ware 3. The great Excellency and Usefulness and Necessity of humane Learning declared in a Sermon preached before the University at Great St. Maries Church in Cambridge Aug. the 7th 1681. As also another by an Ingenious Author The Italian Ship or Pauls Transportation to Rome a Discourse on Acts the 27 and 15 made on March the 20th 1681. by Will. Ramsey B. D. and then Lecturer in Isleworth in Middlesex

made by God because he hath granted the will of man a Patent for Freedom which freedom is incompatible with any such Decree We are not drawn by secret and invisible wires but move voluntarily and from a principle within we are not hurried by external accidents but steer our own course we are free Agents and God made us so when he made us men and our actions are voluntary not necessary (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Goodness saith St. Basil is the work of our will and choice not of necessity if it could be wrought in us against our will it could not be Goodness or Virtue They who would have been wiser than God and seemed to murmur that in their natural Constitution there was not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a necessity of being good and an impossibility of being evil did as St. Basil tells them (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither love goodness nor hate wickedness and that in this vain desire to raise man to that pitch which nothing but phansie could set up they much dishonour'd him and that in seeking to make him more than an Angel they made him less than a man God made man after his own image indu'd him with a reasonable Soul having the use of Understanding and freedom of will he gave him power to consider and deliberate to consult and choose whereby he was made master of himself and Lord of his own actions for if God should force the will of man it were in effect a destroying the nature of his Creature which the grace of God was never designed for but rather to strengthen and assist it We read indeed of infused Habits and what then Though we should as we may grant that good habits are infused to us yet they are not infused without our own concurrence they are poured into us not as water into a cistern but as into living Vessels fitted and prepared for them for if they were infused into us without our own aid or help without our preparing our selves for their reception they could never be lost God onely uses such means to save us as are necessary for one who is to deal with rational Creatures and such as he intends either to reward or punish He makes use of his Calls his Promises his Threatnings his Judgments his Grace Preventing Exciting and Assisting in a word he uses all means but violence and coaction If we were under the ties and restraints of necessity or were overpowr'd by some secret irresistible Cause we should not be so much Agents as Patients and be the objects of Compassion rather than of censures or Penal Inflictions from whence Porphiry was wont to say (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that is moved by Force and Compulsion is no less where he was than if he had not been moved at all for whatsoever alteration in appearance may for the present be made by Necessity and Violence when the Compulsion is taken off every thing returns to its first natural state But without peradventure in all moral Accounts Man is to be supposed to be in that State in which his own choice did first place him and in which he would still have been had not violence removed him So that Seneca was in the right when he said (b) Magnum humanae imbecillitatis patrocinium necessitas Quae quicquid cogit excusat Necessity is the great Sanctuary of humane Infirmity which excuses all its Acts of Compulsion God hath placed before every man Good and Evil that he (c) Vt bonum non necessitate obiret sed voluntate might do good not out of Necessity but willingly saith St. Cyprian for 't is no Commendation not to commit that Evil which we had not the Power to Act (d) Nulla laus est non facere quod non potes saith Lactantius Will you say a Lion is a Lamb when he is within the Grates Will you call an Eunuch chast Or a man in fetters patient Was Bajazet no Tyrant when he was in the Iron Cage In this consists our Obedience that we many times do That which is contrary to our own inclinations but that we always do That which if we would we might not have done For 't is impossible for any finite Creature who hath not his compleatness and perfection within himself to purchase Heaven upon other terms than these that he might have lost it St. Augustin that great Champion for the grace of God saith (d) Homo potest peccare Deum negare sed si nolit non facit A man may Sin and deny God but he doth not unless he will in a word God Commands Obedience but doth not Force it In fine if any shall be so irrational as to maintain the Necessity of sinning they run into that absurd paradox of the Stoicks and place all sins upon the same level of equality equalizing the smallest frailties and infirmities of humane Nature to the most horrid and flagitious crimes they multiply sins at a strange rate but withal lighten the weight and extenuate the guilt of sin allow it to be onely a Notion and instruct men to entertain slight thoughts of it For prevention whereof it will be necessary to acquaint you that all the Providences of God how apt soever they are in their own Nature to affect the Spirits and awaken the Consciences of men yet being intended by God onely as motives perswasives and convictions and not designed as instruments of violence to force the Soul leave men still in the Natural Liberty of their wills and work in such manner as is fit for a reasonable Soul not leading it in chains nor dragging it by Violence like a Slave And St. Cyril of Jerusalem speaks the same sense (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is prone to Beneficence and Mercy but yet he expects that the will of every man should accompany his Grace and Goodness by making a good Choice and this is rendred as the reason of mens being rejected by God Prov. 1.29 Because they did not choose the fear of the Lord Sin as St. Cyril of Jerusalem affirms is (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An Evil but Voluntary Branch that grows from free will and that we sin voluntarily the Prophet tells us Jer. 2.21 I had planted thee a noble Vine wholly a right seed how then art thou turned into a degenerate plant of a strange Vine unto me Upon which words the forenamed Father makes this Descant (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The plantation was good the fruit evil and that evil was chosen he that planted it therefore is not culpable because it was planted to a good end though willfully it brought forth bad fruit for as the Royal Preacher saith Eccles 7.29 God made man upright but they have sought out many inventions so that you see plainly man is so set in the Horizon either of Happiness or Misery that he may betake himself to which of the two he