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	nature_n	son_n	13,355	5	6.0279	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67700	A discourse of government as examined by reason, Scripture, and law of the land, or, True weights and measures between soveraignty and liberty written in the year 1678 by Sir Philip Warwick.	Warwick, Philip, Sir, 1609-1683.	1694 (1694)	Wing W991; ESTC R27062	96,486	228

and which are too too numerous to prescribe rules for It is no marvel then that God who hath made Princes provinces thus large hath afforded them his own title of Gods among men for their providence resembles his in a shadow of the extent of it and in the various affairs it provides for they stand in need of an universal wisdom like his and of an ability of turning evil to good i. e. that that which damnifies private men may be made use of or conduce unto publick advantage Wisdom therefore built her a house and fixt it on seven firm pillars or mankind who found a natural disposition to live ia society as well as a natural necessity in respect of the mutual aid one man gives unto another discerned that the strongest tye to fasten them unto one another was the same band or religion which tyed them unto their God Some learned men make this house to be the body natural of man and the five outward senses to be five pillars of it and the two inward phancy and memory to make up the seven I shall not presume to say the Text warrants my application but in relation unto this discourse I shall make the house to be a body politick or civil Government which may be said to be upheld by these seven underwritten pillars viz. 1. Religion 2. Justice 3. Council 4. Confederation 5. Commerce 6. Treasure 7. Arms. Religion Religion as it is a pillar by it self to support Government so it is the basis of all the six other pillars for as the word imports it is a tye or band betwixt the divine and the human nature and no ligament would have held men together but that which linked God and man together Which commerce or intercourse is the great proof of an intellectual world God's Spirit here influencing this intellectual world as the sun doth the elementary Natural Instituted It is usually divided into natural and instituted or what God writ by creation in the heart or understanding of man and so natural religion was essential to man by creation as instituted was given by or written in his Word for man and principally designed for the manifestation of that revelation which relates to redemption Man naturally capable of immediate revelation from God Man was naturally capable of revelation from or by an intercourse with God by such means as his divine wisdom thought fit to communicate himself for we see before man's fall he received a revelation in that positive prohibition of eating the forbidden fruit for positive laws relating only unto things of an indifferent nature are every one of them so many immediate revelations from God Hence may be observed how extensive natural religion is shewing the human dependence on the divine nature adoring that majesty and goodness and evidencing its own gratitude by its obedience exprest by the exercise of those moral virtues viz. piety justice The extent of natural religion reaching unto that which is usually accounted ●nstitut●d religion and sobriety engraven in its own nature and evidenced by that natural conscience which will disturb even the mightiest Princes when all the world else flatters and secures their vices which proves that men have a prospect of comfort or fear beyond this world The same natural re igion or that reasonableness it is grounded upon shews why men who thus admitted a God thought that God designed for himself peculiar and separate servants temples sacrifices c. and all these to be of the choicest persons and things that were among the sons of men because they were dedicated unto the supreamest essence Hence it is we may conceive that all the religion of the Heathen world was natural for it was so necessary for man to depend upon a superior nature that otherwise as the Lord Bacon says he would not have been able to have supported the frailty of his own nature The Heathens care of religion Man admitted therefore many Gods rather than he would be without one and what were all the opinions of fate and destiny and Elyzium fields but an acknowedgment of providence and immortality and what were all the Philosophers grave precepts about morality but a groping after the Decalogue and the dispersed Ethicks in Scripture How careful was this blind world of their Dianas and Palladiums and topical Gods for herein they thought lay their hope and their strength and expected not a victory till they could enchant or draw over to themselves the God of the place Plutarch could say depraved nature runs into superstition or atheism and then sound reason led unto true religion which is but an obedience unto God's laws written in mans heart upon the ground of piety and gratitude No nation would ever allow atheism among them nor let the divinity of their Gods though false ones be invaded for this among the Athenians cstl Socrates his life and Diagoras was banished by them for but speaking doubtfully of them and Marcus Tullius one of the two Library-keepers of the Sybills books was sewn into a sack and flung into the sea but for making an imbezlement or a rasure Lucius Albinus flying from the Galls with his wife and children seeing the Vestal Virgins on foot descended from his chariot to save and ease them and they all agreed in this that sacriledge was much more heinous than theft and that though Dionysius the Syracusian prided himself in his prosperity even by this sin yet the direful vengeances which befel his son were assigned to be judgments on the sacriledge of the father It is well known how erronious the Heathen Divinity was and yet we cannot but think that these reverences to false Gods were acceptable to the true It was the lapse of nature and the seduction of the evil spirit and inadvertence and habit in evil that made men thus grosly mistake the object of their belief but it was natural reason and religion that made them determine there was somewhat in this kind to be believed and their immoral actions especially as they were nocent to civil society fell under the correction of those laws which were framed to make society beneficial This is enough to shew us how even by the light of nature men made civil society to be supported by religion Rel●gion a 〈◊〉 of civil society for it is not only the cause of good order but of good success or blessing For in Vitellius's time wh●n the Capitol wherein was the Temple of their Gods was burnt they deplored themselves much more than they did when the Galls took their city for then they said the seat of Jupiter was unshaken and their Capitol preserved All this considered we cannot wonder why the wise men of those ages with Aristotle determined that the first care of every State should be that of religion and with Dion Cassius that the religion of every country should be but one The care of religion Now the first reason for the first proposition

was Gods Anointed as well as David Another sort of them say 2. None have right unto the creature but the godly though God makes his sun to shine and his rain to fall on the bad as well as the good and they will judge likewise who are those and then what becomes of the property of their fellow subjects whom they account usurpers thereof 3. An impulse of a brain-sick or vindicative spirit must be by a third sort a command from God and who then is secure of life Neither doth there want those who would be as holy in other mens opinions as they are are in their own and therefore their words must be accepted as an oath and so government lamed in a principal sinew and the reverence and awe which mankind hath ever exprest of God's name to extract truth must be laid aside that their sanctity might be justified But such men as these by their superstitions may contradict sense philosophy natural and instituted religion and fall so low in their very demeanors as are our Quakers and Seekers outward carriage that that which is ridiculous and irrational must be accounted religious or the government must be overthrown 4. Nay a soberer sort of men will so venerate their own interpretations and dogma's that if Civil or Ecclesiastical authority restrained the divulging their opinions though contrary to that of their national Church their petty and small truths if truths must be justifications to them to disquiet the peace of the government Upon this whole representation besides condolement which might lead all these sorts of men unto some modesty what have we to say but that all this is contradictory unto that gospel-Gospel-spirit most of these men pretend unto for if Christ in his own person and his Apostles in theirs would not resist secular Governors for that great truth on which all other Evangelical truths depend i. e. that God was reconciled unto the world by his Son Jesus Christ but chearfully submit themselves unto authority and undergo the punishent that was laid on them then if Pope Presbyter or Phanatick would now think themselves bound to the same submission it might be well thought it would prove the best cure for the two first 's usurpations and the last's delusion But in order to a remedy if we will hear a wise man's opinion there is no better way to stop the rising of new Sects than to reform I have forgot his words gross and known abuses or troublesome niceties and to compound smaller differences and to proceed mildly rather by gentleness than violence and to convert or win over the principal Authors by some countenance or preferment than to imbitter them by scorns But all this is to be meant towards modest Dissenters and such as revile neither governments for if God lead his people by the hand of Moses and Aaron and have ty'd men to them by religion or religious observances of them and any sort of men in matters that are not immoral may rise up against them and say ye take too much upon you ye sons of Levy or what have we to do with Moses all government is at at end And when the religion established in a land is rent by discords and the holiness of the Professors of that religion is much abated and grown hypocritical and so to honest minds scandalous as it was about Mahomet's time for then the Nestorian and Arian heresies much abounded both in Asia and Africa then says this great Chancellor you may look not only for a new Sect but possibly for a new religion And no disobediences to government are so dangerous as those that are grounded upon religion nor no Sect so likely to prevail as those who complain of the present management of affairs and promise great liberties and exemptions I am far from believing The mind cannot be forced yet it may be restrained there is any power in a Prince or a Church to force a man to believe for no man can force himself but in civil or ceremonial concerns if a Prince or a Priest require that which another thinks not prudent or is of an indifferent nature in it self Subjects are bound to nothing or they are bound in matter of this nature to submission for such compliance can never truly wound conscience A Prince may make a civil law about Husbandry which an experienc'd Husbandman may know will not work its end and yet he is bound to an obedience and the Church may enjoyn an imprudent rite and Christian liberty may censure it so and nevertheless it requires an outward conformity And thus we see how religion conduces to civil quiet by admitting a liberty in judging the injunctions of authority and yet making innocent the obedience thereunto For if God in things relating to his own honor exempted not the subject from the civil authority but submitted him to a passive obedience then it is reasonable to judge he doth it much more in all things which concern only mens sociable and civil concerns And this is enough to prove how strong a pillar religion is unto the house of government It is a great observation of Valerius Maximus's whatever the Augurs declared from the Gods the Senate determined not against Religionique summum imperium cessit omnia namque post religionem nostra civitas duxit etiam in quibus summae majestatis conspici decus voluit And they took care religion should be truly taught amongst them insomuch that they gave to the forreign cities under their government Sons of their Prophets to instruct them says this good Author Decem filii singulis Etruriae populis percipiendae sacrorum disciplinae gratia c. Scipio Africanus is said never to have gone about any business but first he went to the temple Governments or bodies politick are as subject to diseases as bodies natural are for a State may be free from violent convulsive fits and yet may fall into a paralytick or hectick distemper or an atrophy for it is an ill sign in a State when subjects dare not rebel and yet grow sullen for such mutinies make no noise and yet loosen all the joynts and ligaments of policy Besides these hardly to be discerned sicknesses of State there are periods of times and revolution of things which have ripened a State for a death even when it seems in a good condition of health or whilst it hath marrow in its bones or a good condition of plenty and peace for so was the time of our late change begun in 1640 when we saw in few years after that there was but one step betwixt the highest and the lowest condition So as unless Providence keep the City the Watchman waketh but in vain and nothing keeps Subjects out of the way of rebellion nor Princes in the way of justice as doth religion Justice the next pillar of Government Justice religion and justice both spring immediately from God for it was the eternal wisdom that formed the ligament or bond