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	love_n	son_n	14,334	5	5.9818	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39741	A sermon preached before the honourable House of Commons at St. Margaret Westminster, on Thursday, the 5th of November, 1691 by William Fleetwood ...	Fleetwood, William, 1656-1723.	1691 (1691)	Wing F1252; ESTC R6743	16,159	32

the wicked Principles they builded upon and instruct them truly in the knowledg of Himself and of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ For without this mighty Operation of God's Spirit on their Understanding and their Wills to think that they who never fail'd of being cruel where they could with safety who never spar'd a Nation or a Country yet will now or any time grow merciful and kind is to hope the Ethiopian may change his Skin and the Leopard his Spots and they do good who are accustomed to do evil Let us then to conclude be just to the Memory of this Day and keep it from the Fate of obsolete and antiquated things It was of late endeavour'd to be laughed and frowned out of Countenance and Credit and had not God in his All wise Disposal of Affairs mark'd it a new with a peculiar and most signal Providence and made it memorable once again by bringing on it to our Shoars our brave and generous Prince to save us from the same though now more open and more manly Enemies this Day had doubtless by the imperious Sway of some the vile and criminal Compliance of others and by the Acquiescence and the cold Indifference of the rest been wholly razed from out our Kalendar and in a little time denied as confidently by them all as it has been of latter days by some But if such matters of fact so publick and notoriously attested are to be disbelieved and discredited so soon that the Ashes of our Forefathers the designed Sacrifices of this Day are scarcely cold in their Graves what Faith shall be given to these Men's Histories of past or present or of times to come Let us then be just to the Mercies of God doubled this day upon our Heads and gratefully remember these Deliverances past and study to walk worthily for the time to come that we tempt him not by Infidelity Unthankfulness or Wickedness to deliver us over into the Will of our Adversaries Let us be just to our Religion and that Knowledge of the Father and the Son to which we have already attained by the Light and Understanding of the Gospel Let us have the Principles of Blood and Mischief in all the abhorrence and abomination in the World as becometh those that profess the Gospel of Christ Let us hinder them from taking effect by all the lawful and the honest means allow'd us Let us say of them and their Religion as far as it is not Christian what dying Jacob said of his two Sons Simeon and Levi Instruments of Cruelty are in their Habitations O my Soul come not thou into their Secret unto their Assembly mine Honour be not thou united For in their Anger they slay Men and in their Self-will dig down Walls Cursed be their Anger for it is fierce and their Wrath for it is cruel But let us withal put in practice all those Lessons of Peace and Love and Gentleness of Mercy and Compassion and Forgiveness that our Religion urges and obliges to Let us heap Coals of Fire and fervent Charity upon their Heads and let them see and know we are not more reformed from the Corruptions of their Doctrines and their Superstitious Practices than from their Doctrines of ill Nature and their Practices of Cruelty and Blood We shall in vain pretend to distinguish our selves by Name and Party if we change not Nature and Condition we must not think to exclaim on their Uncharitableness and Cruelty to exercise our own Tumults and Rage and Fierceness and Destruction are as innocent and Christian in Romish Hands and Hearts as they are in Protestants and it may be so much the more by how much the less we pretend to them and wretched are we if we condemn in them what we approve and what allow of in our selves If then we would convince the World and them that we know the Father and the Son as we ought to know we must pursue the things that make for Love and Peace and Unity Which the God of Peace grant we may all of us do for the Sake of him who came to Preach it to us To whom with the Blessed Spirit be all Honour and Glory Might and Dominion now and for ever FINIS

they did God Service in so using them If we should yet proceed to enquire upon what Grounds and Reasons Christians go when they pursue each other to death and find it is because some know the Father and the Son in one and others in another way and the Stronger will impose his way of knowing on the Weaker or else he shall not know at all a considering Man must stand amazed and have a very mean Opinion both of Human Reason and the Christian Institution And yet the Case is neither better nor worse than so One knows the Father and the Son in Pomp and Ceremonious Ostentation of External Worship and another in Plainness and Simplicity One serves him by the means of Images and gorgeous Representations another Worships him in Spirit and in Truth One takes his necessary Doctrins from Tradition's Mouth another from the Oracles of God alone One forms his Notions of a Church from what his Fancy tells him were convenient it should be another takes it as he plainly finds it and is content with the Wisdom of God which often seems but Foolishness to Man One interesses Saints and Angels in his behalf to God the Father together with the Mediation of the Son another thinks that God the Son is sufficient of himself being as powerful as willing to save to the utmost all that call upon him one will have all the Sacrament in both kinds as it is certain Christ distributed it and his Disciples and the Church after them for many Ages Another gives but half but says it is the whole to all Intents and Purposes arguing with subtilty and much distinction in a matter wholly of Institution and Revelation One takes that Sacrament and believes it is a Mystery and certainly made what our Lord design'd and what the Words effect with Prayer Another takes it and believes that God hath made himself which yet destroys the very Notion and Nature of a God by confounding the greatest Proof we have of such a Being as neither had nor can have a beginning And that when he is thus made anew Man takes him in his Mouth and swallows down into his Stomach the Son of Man of Thirty three Years of Age and the Eternal Son of God by whom he made by whom he redeemed the World with abundance of other plain distinct Doctrines as any in the World yet calls it after that a Mystery And what 's the event of all this contrariety Why that they who know the Father and the Son one way should not endure that any one should know them in another way and live 'T is in vain to tell them that you guide your self by the Light of Nature and make the best use you can of your Reason and call in the Aids of Learning and an honest Mind and submit to whatever appears to be plainly revealed This will not do you must believe or dissemble or die if you have not Faith or Knavery you must have Patience and Courage to attend to the last Reasons of Fire and Sword and Halters Sure 't is impossible that Christ our gracious merciful adorable Redeemer should leave the Bosome of the Father where he Reigned in everlasting Love and Unity to come and sow the Seeds of Strife and Discord upon Earth That he should take upon him Humane Nature to devest it for ever after of the Bowels of Compassion That he should descend to instruct the World in new-unheard-of Lessons of Barbarity That he should design to abrogate the Sacrifice of Beasts and spare their Lives to substitute the Lives of Men and satiate his incensed Father with the horrid Steams of Humane Blood and let his own be shed to teach us how to pour out one another's on the Ground like Water He should not have been born of such a sweet and gentle Maid nor suck'd the Breasts of any humane Female he found the World in better Order and rul'd by milder Principles And if these things be so he will give us leave as there is reason to say with respect to the Concerns of this Life good had it been for Men he never had been born But God forbid things should be so Heaven is not farther distant fom the lowest Hell the Purity of GOD Himself from the Pollutions of the vilest Sinner than bloody Principles and Practices are from Christ's Religion Of all the Constitutions and religious Dispensations and Oeconomies that ever were contrived by Men or revealed by God there is none so little able to support the deadly weight of Inhumanity as the Christian is The very Incarnation of our Saviour preaches up Love and Goodness in the loudest tone and most affecting and surprizing manner in the World The Angels sang not only Glory be to God on high but Peace on Earth and Good will towards Men and that not only in respect of God but of one another Never was Life more full of Sweetness and Humanity His Doctrine was all Peace and his Practice one continued Act of going about and doing Good Love was his old his new his first his middle and his last Command Love was his living Exercise and Love his dying Legacy It was the Badge and Cognizance of those that truly followed him By this shall all Men know that ye are my Disciples if ye love one another And to be sure he did not mean Men should distinguish so exactly as they do the Love of their Neighbours Souls from that of their Bodies It had been wretched trifling and unworthy of our Lord or any good Man to have so frequently pressed the Duty of loving one another if he intended only loving of their Souls By this shall all Men know that ye are my Disciples if you love one another's Souls though ye torment their Bodies days and years by Tortures Racks and Engines by burning strangling blowing up or any other exquisite ingenious way of murchering them This I say had been unfit for Christ or any good and sober Person to intend and only worthy of the villainous Subtilty and tender Nicety of the Fathers of the Inquisition who whilst the Eye-balls of the Sufferers in that sanctified Hell are rolling in Death and startling from their Orbs and their Souls expiring amidst the Torments stand kindly by and with wondrous Charity beseech the Executioners by the tender Mercies of God and by the Bowels of our Lord to take great heed they shed not a drop of Christian Blood As if the tender Mercies of our God and the Bowels of our Lord were not an Adjuration strong enough to move Compassion for the Body as well as the Soul and for other ways of killing as well as shedding Blood No if the Spirit of Christ and his Religion be to be discovered in the Gospel and the sacred Writings of the Apostles let Men pretend never so much to know the Father and the Son yet if their Principles and Practices tend to Blood and Cruelty and let them be never so firmly perswaded in their