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	truth_n	worship_v	16,055	5	9.8540	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43754	A brief relation of the irreligion of the northern Quakers wherein their horrid principles and practices, doctrines and manners ... are plainly exposed to the view of every intelligent reader : together with a (brief reply) to some part of a very scurilous and lying pamphlet called.	Higginson, Francis, 1617-1670.; Fox, George, 1624-1691. Sauls errand to Damascus.	1653 (1653)	Wing H1953; ESTC R34465	75,893	103

be yet more of them he quickened his Horse with his Spur and declined to the other side of the Lane At the turn of the way were two more Muskets discharged upon him where in all probability he could not have escaped the intended mischiefe had not the Lord mercifully frustrated the bloody Intentions of those his unknown Enemies These men fled immediately the darknesse of a long Winter night which they had before them it being then about the end of December helping to conceale their persons That these men that attempted this Murther were of this Sect is not certainly known but it is strongly presumed and concluded that they were none other by all the Country for these reasons 1. He was generally reproached and threatned by the Quakers for sending Nayler to Prison some of whom were not long before heard to say they would pick his Skin full of holes 2. That very day before there were many of that malicious Sect in Appleby that came to visit Nayler who might take notice of his being there and be invited to take that opportunity of executing their bloody purposes 3. This Gentleman is of such known honesty and Ingenuity that he is generally beloved in the Country and hath not I dare say an Enemy in the world one quarter so cruell as to thirst after his blood except among that Rabble That multitudes of Scurrilous Libels against Ministers and private persons have been fastened to their doores thrown into their houses pinn'd on Pulpit Cushions on the Lords daies and on the Church doores without any name affixed by those Pretenders to Christianity is a thing well known For satisfaction of the Reader I shall give him a true Coppy of one that was affixed one Lords day about the beginning of Ianuary last unto the Church-door at Lancaster which Dr. Marshall openly read to the people there assembled that they might perceive the strange temper of the Spirits of those men by such their unsavoury Eructations A Copy of a Scurrilous Paper affixed to the Church Doore at Lancaster THis is the Idols Temple where the worship of the Beast is upheld down with it down with it Revel 15. 7. 8. Revel 1. 2. 5. God that made the World and all things therein dwels not in this Idolls Temple that is made with hands Act. 7. 47 48 49. Act. 17. 21. Neither is he worshipped in this Idolls Temple with mens hands Act. 17. 24. God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth for the Father is seeking such to worship him Ioh. 14. 23 24. All the World wonders after the Beast and worshippeth the Beast but those who have found their names written in the Book of life and they that worship the Beast and receive his Mark in their Forehead as sprinckling Infants and worshipping the works of their own hands following the imaginations of their hearts they must drink of the wine of the wrath of the Almighty powred out without mixture Revel 14. 9 10 11 12. This Idolls Temple that is made with hands is a place for Night-birds and Screech-Owles to meet each one to the dishonour of the true God that dwelleth in Temples made without hands at new Ierusalem where the Temple of God is with men Revel 21. 3. Drunkards and Swearers Revellers and Scoffers and Scorners and proud and wanton ones and Hypocrites and Dissemblers Enviors Haters back-biters Persecutors Lustfull ones and contentious Persons and Earth-wormes meets here the fearifull and unbelieving peevish and perverse and contentious ones meets here in their Idolls Temple to satisfie their Lusts and saith the Lord this people draw neer me with their mouths and honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me But know yee not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdome of Heaven but must be cut down and cast into the fire and have their Portion in the Lake that burneth be not deceived God is not mocked This is a Deceiver that standeth up here to deceive the people every seventh day proud and covetous and speaketh a Divination of his own brain and not from the mouth of the Lord and so makes the people light and vain but the Lord is against him hold him not up All the Children of the Lord are and shall be taught of the Lord Jer. 31. 34 Isa. 54. 13. 1 Joh. 2. 27. Of a long time it was a constant practise of some of the most impudent of them to enter in a scornfull manner with their hats on into the publike Assemblies in some places and to raile openly and exclaim aloud against the Ministers with most reproachfull tearmes in time of the dispensation of Gods Ordinances calling them byars Seducers Baals Priests Deluders of the people and bidding them come down from the high places There is fulnesse of Witnesses for this in Kendall and Lancashire and other places And this not onely before but since the Justices at Appleby ordred the binding of such Disturbers to the Peace but alas what can bind them to Peaceablenesse whose Spirit is tumultuous or what can Law do when Conscience is seared and takes tumultuousnesse for a Duty Mr. Coale who was employed to preach abroad in this County where the most eminent necessity of this County lay viz. Where the Country was destitute of a Preacher hath had much experience of them and hath professed that long it was before he could have any peace or safety but the Lord stood by him Two or three of the ablest of them have dogg'd him from place to place and come severall times to his house with horrible railings And lately not many weeks since two or three at once in the open Street fell upon him with such horrid expressions as might shew to all the world the boyling of a most Hellish Rancour and with such fury that he was beholden to Friends to rescue him from them The next Lords Day three of these wanderers came into the Congregation at Kendall and called to him to come down belching forth such tearms of Baals Priests c. and Hellish reproaches as filled both the Congregation and streets after with Tumult The violence offered by some of this people in an open Auditory to one Master Crosby had proved little lesse then the losse of his life as himself hath affirmed openly if the Lord had not been on his side What was complotted against another Minister as he gathereth from a Letter sent him by one of that confederacy but a friend at that time as God so ordered it I cannot relate but the said Minister could not as he said conjecture lesse then some grosse abuse intended against him as he was discoursing with Fox had not one present prevented it Others have been desired by some friends to keep out of their way for they heard a mischief was intended them What Eye in these parts where this people live is not a witnesse of the tumults and uprores they make in Markets What ear hath

have left the Truth and the good waies of the Lord which are alwaies like themselves and as unalterable as the courses of the Stars of Heaven And now they fluctuate like the Waves of the Sea they have unbottomed themselves and now they know not where to fix they are removed from that Religion that is true to another Gospell and now they have both the Credenda Facienenda the Doctrinall and Practicall parts of their Irreligion they have taken up to seek and settle It is not to be expected that they will be a yeare or two hence what they are now new Visions new Revelations they daily look for Unstable Soules whither will your Fancies go whither will he drive you that sets you on work One in Kerbylonsdale Parish that had been of their Society a while fell sick of an Ague and was by it detain'd at home a Month after recovery going to their Assemblies again he professed that he found them so altered from their Principles in that Months time that he could onely know them by their faces to be the same men not by the constitution of their mindes Divers others that were a while agon of their way perceiving the instability of their Opinions and Impiety of their walkings are now fallen off from them and frequent the publike Assemblies as before The Profession of some of the tallest of this Sect that afford shadow to the rest hath had almost as many faces as the Moon before they turned Promoters of Quakers The world hath seen them zealous for Episcopall Policy and Ceremonies hot for Presbytery all for Independency and after all for Antinomianisme Anabaptisme and now beyond all onely for Foxes new Irreligion which is above all Formes and Ordinances Most of them that steer their course according to the direction of these wandring Stars were heretofore noted men for their Singularity and unsoundnesse of their Tenets such as ever affected to put on the newest Fashion of Religion A Taylor at Grayrigge that while there was no Minister there used to speak publikely every Lords day delivered them openly many dangerous and Hereticall Doctrines and what ever his Doctrine was true or false he was wont daily as his Hearers said to pawn his Soule on the truth of his Assertions and bid if they were not such to take him for ever for a false Prophet Yet this man after Fox and Nayler came into these parts having been their Auditor a little while was perverted by them and became a Quaker left his former Principles and came to Grayrigge where he had taught long before and told the people he had formerly deluded them and taught lyes and false Doctrine among them but he had now found the right way indeed with other words to that effect The Builders of this Babell of the Quakers which they as impiously as vain-gloriously call the Temple of the Lord will have no Tooles taken out of the Shops of humane Learning to work withall and indeed I think they have not except what the Learning of Winstanley and Collier have afforded them If any of their way of of the Countenancers of them be learned indeed as some of them are held to be I look upon their owning and admiring at it and those empty Clouds their Speakers as a very sad Judgment of God upon them sending them strong delusions to believe a lye They hate a Library Cane pejus Angue all Expositors of holy Scripture they call Heatheninsh Commentators the Reliques of those pious Learned men that were great Lights in the Churches of Christ in their Ages such Books I mean as Students in Theology use as good helps to attain to that excellent Knowledge of the Doctrine of the holy Scriptures they tearm heathenish Books and the Compilers of them heathenish Authors Languages and Arts and such like Ornamentall Qualifications are ulcerous Deformities in these mens eyes A methodicall discourse is an Odium all distinctions they say are the Seed of the Serpent they savour too much of solid Knowledge They deny it to be needfull to bring up Children in any Learning and some of them have taken their Children from Schoole Their Books and Papers which they disperse abroad the Country with these or such like absurd frothy Sefle-contradicting Quaeries Whether the Lord made use of any as Ministers of his minde unto the people that were bred idle at Sdhooles and Universities all the daies of their lives without a calling as the Priests of England but rather the contrary as Moses a Shepheard Amos a Heardsman Christ himselfe a Carpenter Paul a Tent-maker Peter a Fisherman Whether ever Universities or Schooles of Learning were in holy Scripture called the Well-heads of Divinity Whether ever Christ and his Apostles did make use of those great Bugbeares so common in use with the Priests of England to prevent the Saints from preaching the Gospell and the world from hearing them As first the Approbation and Ordination of the men of the Earth Secondly humane Learning and the Language of the Beast without which men are in their account altogether unmeet to meddle in the things of God Whether ever Christ and his Apostles did confirm the Truths they delivered by the power of the Magistracy Authors and Fathers Whether the Spirits teaching be not sufficient in the things of God Whether it be not the work of Christ and that which is to be expected in the latter daies to overturn overturn overturn all these waies so contrary to his own minde What do they mean in the last Quaere what Spirit is this they speak from but let these Quaeries go as they are for me Of their Idlenesse Savage Incivilities and their Irreligious bloody barbarous and turbulent practises TO what hath been hitherto related of their Impieties and disorderly walkings it may be added that they are many of them notorious for Idlenesse in their Callings working not at all sometimes for whole weeks and months together Some of them leave their Wives Children Families Vocations and turn all Journy-men Speakers Others regardlesse of all at home wander after them compassing the Country from place to place and live upon those of their Fraternity where they light to their Excessive charge They are degenerated also to such Incivilities as are in few places of the World to be found among the Heathens having departed from the Doctrine of Christ and practise of Civility both together Reader I have been an Eye-witnesse of more courteous behaviour in the Indians of the West and Natives of the East Indies and Moores of Africa then these men will afford to their neerest Relations or those they ought most to honour A Son if turned a Quaker will not use the usuall Civility of the world that is christian in putting off his hat to his Father or Mother will give them no civill Salutations to bid him Goodmorrow that begat him or her Good night or farewell that brought him forth is with them accounted a wickednesse None of the

Christians Ministers Physitians and such as are able to judge do so conceive of them 2. It is an utter impossibility for any man especially women that never knew what belonged to Stage-playing and young Children to feign such swounings tremblings palsie-motions swelling foaming purging such great and horrid screechings and roarings yea common Modesty would restrain any man or woman that are themselves from such uncleanly Excretions as do often accompany these sordid Trances Surely it must needs bee some black Art that works so turbulently on mens Spirits or bodies and conjures them into such Surprizes 3. The holy Scripture predicts 2 Thes. 2. 9. that the coming of Antichrist the man of sin c. shall be after the working of Satan with all Power and Signes and lying Wonders and withall deceivablenes of Unrighteousness in them that perish and that God shall send his Followers strong Delusions to believe lyes c. Ergo the coming of Antichrist and Hereticall Speakers may be such also 4. Their Quakings are very like the Fits of that Child mentioned Mark 9. 17 18. 20. 26. Master saith the Father of the Child to Christ I have brought unto thee my Son which hath a dumb Spirit and wheresoever he taketh him he teareth him and he foameth and gnasheth with his teeth and pineth away and strait-way the Spirit tare him and he fel on the ground and wallowed foaming and the Spirit cryed and rent him sore and came out of him and he was as one dead This is as punctuall a Description of a Quakers Fit as if it had been intended for a portrature of it and for that particular in it which concernes pining away all the Country in these parts knowes how pittifully many of the Quakers look by reason of those Fits and immoderate fastings and some distemper it may be of brain besides and what pale ill countenances they have now in comparison of what they had before they joyned themselves to this Sect This is not generally true of them but so true of some of them that they may be discovered by their very faces 5. The Devill delights to possesse and abuse the bodies of men and women that are in his power when and as far as God permits but this people who have forsaken the truth and true Worship of God his Ordinances Commandements and are selfe-excommunicate may more then probably be lookt upon as delivered up to Satan by God himselfe as may appeare by this whole Relation Ergo the Divell Will delight to possesse and abuse their bodies 6. It is no new thing for false Prophets to fall into Satanicall Trances such were Mathewes Becold and others the Prophets of Munster which lay sometimes two or three daies in their Ecstacies though some think they were Forgeries and therefore we need not wonder at these Raptures as if some strang thing had happened amongst us that was never heard of before especially seeing this people both Leaders and Learners if it be proper to call them so that will away with no teaching are as like that Phrantick Rabble that once Reigned in Munster as any one thing can be like another 7. Women or Children or those that have fasted long such as are most subject to Fascination do most frequently fall into these Surprizals 8. These Ecstasies are seales of Doctrines of Divels therefore from the Divell Mr. Perkins in his discourse of Witchcraft Chap. 3. Sect. 4. makes this difference betwixt Divine and Diabolicall Trances Divine Ecstasies tend alwayes saith he to the confirming of the truth of the Gospell and the furtherance of true Religion and Piety such was Peters Act. 10. 11. which served to assure him of his calling to preach the Gospell to the Gentiles and to inform his Judgment in this Truth that there was no acceptation of Persons with God and that to them of the new Testament all things were clean and nothing polluted But the scope of them that are from Satan is principally the suppressing and hinderance of Religion the drawing of the weak into Errours the ratifying and confirming of those that are fallen thereinto and the generall upholding of practises of ungodlinesse 9. Mr. Perkins ibid. makes this another difference between Divine and Satanicall Trances In Divine Trances saith he the Servants of God have all their Senses yea and all the powers of Soule and Body remaining sound and perfect onely for a time the Actions and Operations are suspended and cease to do their duty But in Ecstasies that be from Satan his Instruments are all cast into Frenzies and Madnesse so as Reason in them is darkened and Understanding obscured Memory weakened the Brain distempered so kind is Satan to his Friends that he will leave his tokens behind him where ever he comes in this sort That some of these people have fallen out right and furiously mad and dyed in that madnesse That others of them have been and are strangely distracted and that the Countenance ' of many of them bewraies the troubles and distemper of their heads is too well known in these parts to be denyed This Brain-sicknesse though I know it is principally to be imputed to the just Judgment of God upon them who have turned away their Eares from the Truth and greedily drunk down many intoxicating Opinions yet I think it very probable that in some of them it is the Fruit of these Ecstatick Fits whereby Satan hath disturbed and debilitated their Intellectuals 10. George Fox the Ring-leader of this Sect hath been and is vehemently suspected to be a Sorcerer The presumptions of his wickednesse in this kind are not weak Some persons of good quality that came out of Notinghamshire to Kendall told them of Note in that Town what Pranks this Fox had played and what disturbance he had caused in that County before he came into these more Northern parts and with all he credibly reported to them a very strange story of the Devills discovering this Fox to be one of his Vassalls and Agents while he was there in a certainr house together with many of his Disciples speaking to them This Accident he said caused many of his followers to desert both him and his wicked way and principally procured this Foxes Apprehension and imprisonment in Nottingham Castle till he runne away and his Keeper with him It hath been his custome in these parts to fix his Eyes earnestly on such strangers as came into his company a good while together as though he wold look them through If any one please to look on him sted fastly again it is his manner impudently to out-stare them His followers say he can out-look any man and that he doth it to know what is in them but if there be such a thing as Fascination by an evill Eye I should rather suspect him guilty of that then of any abillity to discern the complexions of mens soules in their Faces When such as have conceived any likeing of their way come to their meetings or any young men