Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	flesh_n	lust_n	sin_n	7,244	5	5.0237	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A84597	The scorned Quakers true and honest account, both why and what he should have spoken (as to the sum and substance thereof) by commission from God, but that he had not permission from men, in the Painted Chamber on the 17th. day of the 7th. month 1656. before the Protector and the Parliament then, and there met together, with many more of no mean account, who were not of them, yet were then crowded in among them.	Fisher, Samuel, 1605-1665.	1656 (1656)	Wing F1057; Thomason E889_10; ESTC R202114	32,531	40

have been formerly acted towards me but formally and fainedly saith the Lord insomuch that since you are still in your iniquities I cannot away with your solemn assemblies I smell no sweet smell in your Sacrifices it is iniquitie to me even your most solemn meeting Therefore now trust not in lying words saying the Temple of the Lord the Church of God the worship of God and such like nor think that this is the fasting that I have chosen and will accept for a man to afflict his soul and hang down his head for a day and then go on in his sins as if he had obtained from God by his coming to him a dispensation to sin more securely another time for this is but deceit and all your labour will prove but a lye to you saith the Lord but wash you make you clean and abstain from the fleshly lusts of your own hearts and turn in every one of you to the light in your own consciences that shews you good and evil and frame your ways and your doings according thereunto even that pure Law of righteousness plac●d within you whereby every one of you are made from God even a Law unto your selves which light is Gods own wi●ness within you all which if it condemn you God justifies you not and hearken to the voice of that Prophet Christ Jesus to whom in words your own preachers point you and to whom I who came not in among you this day to be your Teacher my self but to direct you to him do from God himself who sent me direct you as your truest Teacher to whom also the true Ministry did direct men of old who were sent of him to turn men from darkness to the light from the power of Satan to God who is light and to Christ himself who is the light of the world that enlightneth every man that cometh into the world That Prophet whose voice soever hears not and obeys not even in all things whatsoever he saith to them shall be cut off from among his people who by a measure of light from himself hath enlightned every one of you whose voice is within and not without to you nor heard now without by any of you for the Scripture is not his voice but so far as truly translated a Declaration of what he spake to and by those holy men that were moved to write it who heard his voice within and saw him in his own light within as ye may do if ye will but hear ye deaf and look ye blind for he is that powerfull and living word of God which is nigh you so nigh that ye need not say who shall go to Heaven to fetch him down to us and who shall go hither or thither beyond Sea or into Scotland or this Land or that to fetch a Directory for us he is nigh even in your hearts within you by his light Preaching himself to you and the mind and will of the Father to you and known by you to be in you too if you be not Reprobates yea I say it again to you from the Lord there is within you his Light which both seeth and sheweth you all that ever you did in your lives and that you now dayly do think or speak and sets all your sins in order before you reproving you for them in your own consciences if you do but heed him and that is the light of Christ the word of God that is quick searches you to the quick before whom all things are n●ked and bare and by whom all shall be brought to judgement who by his light within you sheweth you as in a glass your own faces your own Spirits your own selves and what manner of men you are as the Scriptures cannot do for in the Scriptures which I own and honour and am far from disswading any man from looking into you may read the Right of things and what you should and should not be and do but the light within is larger than that and of further extent shewing not onely the Right and the Law and what we should be and do but also the fact even what we do and are the light which the Scripture sends to as we also do it manifests all things not onely that ought to be done but also that are done and therefore evill ones come not to it least their deeds by it should be reproved but they that do truth come to it not onely that it may appear as it may in a Letter without also to them that besides the light within have the Law in a Letter also and heed it what they shou●d do but what they do that their deeds may be manifest whether they are wrought in God yea or nay now turn in your minds I say to that even to the light I say not to the darkness for there is that also but to the light which is within and that b●ing heeded will lead you out of the works of darkness that it discovers to be in you even up to Christ to the life of Christ and God from whom it comes yea if you be minded to try the truth of it turn into it in what measure you take heed to it and abide by it even by the word hid in the heart you shall not sin against God they do no iniquity who walk in that his Law they that walk in the Spirit shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh you shall find that light the power of God to the salvation of you from the sins which it shew● to be in you and bring you not onely under judgement for them and to confess ye the sins that are past and so to a forgiveness of them but also through faith in his blood to a cleansing from all unrighteousness all filthiness of flesh and Spirit and to the perfecting of holyness in the fear of God and bring forth his righteousness in you and his Image in you who is made of God to them that receive him even wisdom righteousness sanctification and redemption and they in him the Sons of God and partakers of his na●ure to that therefore turn your minds and attend and by it be guided and there you will witness peace and acceptance with God and boldness before God your own hearts not checking nor condemning you of sin which is the transgression of that Law however you may be condemned of men which turning from you go condemned in your selves and before God and then what will it profit you if all men should speak well of you and justify you and say you are Godly and honest men and this and that And this is the onely infallible teacher for all men for the Scriptures not as written by the men that were inspired but as since then mistranscribed even in the very Greek and Hebrew Copies how much more as we have them mistranslated in many things and in so many severall translations these are in somethings fallibe so not fit to

be the Rule as in the dark for want of the true light yet shining which now shineth forth they have been supposed to be and the onely sure foundation of the faith and Church but Christ himself his light and Spirit which shew good and evill in the heart which are the onely Guide Light Commander Counceller Leader Law Lawgiver Foundation and Rule which the Scripture sends to and this is infallible and to be followed in what it speaks infallibly and not otherwise to the conscience and there is the onely sure and safe walking even in the light in Christ in the Spirit and not in the Letter which is fallible by false interpretation and translation which yet is true as 't was penn'd by the Spiri● much less in the flesh and in the darkness as too many do besides both the Letter and the light of them that talk much of the Let●er yea of them that talk also of the spirit of the light but if the light be put out in any through abuse of it and the God of this world hath been suffered by the God of all the worlds to bli●d the mind and put out the eye then if the light be darkness and the eye which is the light of the body be out how great is that darkness who can help i● who can help it if for not walking in the light while men had it darkness is come upon them if for not liking to retain God in their knowledge when what might be known of him was manifest in them and shewed in them and for not glorifying him as God but becoming vain in their imaginations and not receiving the love of the truth that shined in them their foolish heart was darkened and they given over to strong delusion to vile affections to do things unseemly to hate whisper backbite envy murder be filthy drunken swear steal lye dissemble still they knew the judgement of God that they that do such things are worthy of death yet not onely did the same but had pleasure in those that did them if the Gospell be thus hid it is hid but to them that are lost but they are happy still who keep stedfast in the light their foundation is still sure and infallible whose heart condemns not it self nor the true light that shines in it in what it allows it self in and does for he that walks in meekness temperance love joy peace innocency righteousness purity patience doing what he would be done to which is the Law and the Prophets saith Christ the sum of all the fulfilling of the Law which things the light Spirit of Christ leads all that follow it up to cut of the lusts and fruits and wayes of the fl●sh if all men cry out of him for an heretick a deceiver a Devill a base fellow a disturber as they did of Christ he clearly comprehends them all to be but in the deceit themselves and in the vanity of their own thoughts and falseness of their own imaginations yea infallibly he knows in the light of the Lord himself to be a true man and all those that think him otherwise and call him hypocrite to be but lyars and again if a man walk in the lusts and wayes of the flesh which are infallibly also manifest in the light as drunkeness revelling wantoness couzening cheating fighting hating adultery murder lying and the like If all the men in the world shall flatter him and tell him he does well and he need not fear but he is right and these things are good and pleasing unto God unless I say again the light be quite put out as the candle of the wicked which once they had shining in them often is and then wo so that they call good evill and darkness light being scaled up under obscure darkness in Gods just wrath against the judgement there is that light in his conscience will tell him if he heed it his way is false and filthy and these men that cry peace to him in it are all lyars and when ever the book of conscience but a little opens it appears so to be in wicked men at this very day Now therefore turn into that Law of mine written in your hearts saith the Lord which Law if you turn away your ears from the hearing of your very prayers are abominable unto me saith the Lord yea though you make many prayers to me and long and spread forth your hands and howl unto me as you do on your fast dayes and in the dayes of your ordained humiliations whereby to make your voyce to be heard on high yet will I not give ear unto you saith the Lord but as I call and cry for righteousness and purity even within you and ye hear not so ye shall call and cry to me without and not be heard and though my hand be no way shortned that it cannot save nor my ear heavy that it cannot hear yet if after your fasts you enter as you have often done into strife and debate and smite even my people with the fist of wickedness and find your own pleasure and do your own works and wills and think your own thoughts and live still under the power of your lusts and will not be led by my Spirit in you which would lead you from them then I will not accept you at all yea my Soul shall even loath and abhor you and these iniquities of yours shall separate between me and you and your sins shall keep good things from you even the good things ye cry and call for and you shall wait for peace but behold trouble for light and joy but there shall be dimness of anguish and ye shall be driven more and more to darkness and ye shall roare like Bears and mourn sore like Doves and groap for the wall like the blind even like them that have no eyes and those that looke for good from you who are their representatives shall find none their eyes shall fail with looking for help from you and even drop out before ever deliverance shall come to them by you yea they shall wait for justice but there shal be more oppression of them righteousness but there shall be nothing but a cry because he that departeth from iniquity is made a prey among you still and ye hate him that reproveth in the gate and a man is made an offender for a word speaking even for my word spoken among you by command and commission from my self neither shall any one among you be able to uphold and ye shall be a broken staff in the hands of such as leane upon you running into their hands rather than sustaining neither is there any one of you from the highest to the lowest that shall come to good or be vessells of honour saith the Lord unless ye be sanctifyed by my light or counted fit at all for the Masters use Be wise now therefore O ye Kings ye Rulers and Judges of the Earth and serve the

before they had been so far onward in passing our and am not out of hopes but that they will patiently read me herein how ever but by many of that multitude that was mingled then among them who much like them who fell with one accord upon Paul accusing him that contrary to the Law he taught the worship of God and took Sosthenes and beat him before the very judgement Seat of Gallio the Governour he caring for none of those things 18 Act 12. 17. took and tore me from my standing tumbling and haling me to and fro and how far hitting me I name not sith I had no hurt I cannot say before his face for his back was then turned to pass away but while the Protector was yet in presence howbeit not knowing happily what they did which incivility of theirs I now mention not to shame any of those men that shamed themselves if they be not such unjust ones as know no shame too much in the very acting it yet O Lord lay not that their sin unto their charge but to shew them how much more uncivill they were when they had done in laying their own sin to my charge for howbeit I was wholly innocent as to any breach of peace in coming thither in a peaceable manner to shew them the way to the true peace which they know not yet as it ever did upon the Lord himself and all his Prophets who when they were most disturbed were made disturbers whereupon I rejoyce and am contented disturbance arose upon me and not onely so but even by the Justice of Peace in whose custody I was a while as well as by the rest who made the ront I was accused as a wanderer that went about disturbing of the peace But the day is now dawning and that true light shining forth which will shew as the book of conscience comes on to be opened and it cannot now be much longer closed that such as are run out and gone astray from the light of the Lord and cry peace peace to themselves in their sins and in their wicked disturbings of his truth are the chief vagabonds and peace-breakers both in their own souls and in the Nations sith there begins to be from henceforth for ever and is to be from henceforth more than ever no peace saith my God unto the wicked Now as to all those that were then so rude and unreasonable as to say it was both unmannerly and unseasonable for me to offer to speak then and there though in the Name and power of the living God as if it were King Jeroboams Chapell or some place so priviledged by the Lord God himself from having any of his word dropped there that none of his Prophets may come near it I advise them to consider that the word of God as it is worthy to be tarryed for by Man and waited for by Man so it cannot as the words of trencher-Chaplains often if not ever do tarry for Man nor wait for Man it ever comes at his own will and not at the will of Man but in a Cross to it even his will who speaks and his who is spoken to the Spirit blows as well when as where it lists and the Man that is born after the flesh may hear the sound thereof but cannot tell whence it comes nor whether it goes nor what his being nor way nor time nor season is who is borne after the Spirit and therefore ever opposes and contradicts him fancying that which the other knows to be most in season to be most out of season and holding the word which is to be preached both in and out of season most unsutable and unseasonable at the time and place when and where if it be not spoken no other time or place to speak it in acceptably unto God can be found either sutable or seasonable and just so no otherwise as will appear by these presents to any but the blind was the case in that my speaking of it which is here spoken for and proved to be both just and warrantable in my faithfull tendring of my self to the speaking of which as I was commanded I am delivered from the terror of the Lord and the blood of these three Nations which would have been upon my head if for either fear or favour I had rebelled against his spirit and forborn to bear my Testimony against those transgressions of these times which makes them perilous and how hardly soever I am both judged and spoken of in the dark night of Mans day yet in the Lords own light I see my acceptance with him and abide in that peace which far passes all their understandings that for the truths sake shall ever trouble me and which I would not want for want of obeying for all that outward peace and prosperity of those I would have spoken to put together if they be at peace under the power of any sin and in the Generall day of the Lords judgement which is near upon them I shal be cleared to have done nothing amiss in that Matter and nothing but what was in true love not onely to the Lord but also to their souls who may probably hate me for my offering to tell them the truth nevertheless that in the mean time truth may not bear all the blame as it hitherto hath done in all ages and places of those hurryes and stirs that are about it in the world to which it s no way accessary as the cause thereof for that Mens lusts who hate it but as an occasion I was since then moved of the Lord sith I was not heard to write this one sillable of which neither was before nor else was to have been for ought I know committed to writing and at my return to my own home whether if he please I am now passing to leave a testimony behind me of my innocency in the case wherein most that hear of it may hold me guilty in order whereunto and in obedience to his Motion I have given forth not onely what goes before as a manifestation of what true right I had then and there to speak but also that which follows wherein excepting onely what is annexed in the Margent is the very sum thereof as a Manifestation of what true and right things might have been spoken as they were committed to me from God to speak by his own power assisting had I been permitted to speak by Men or had not Satan been permitted as at other times also he hath to enterpose his power and been found resisting by his Assistants The sum and substance of the Messuage it self and for the most part the very order and forme of words which could I have been heard I should have spoken in THe burden of the word of the Lord God of Heaven and of earth as it came unto me on the 22th day of the last Month and as it now lyeth upon me to declare it in his Name both unto thee even unto thee Oliver

rain down snares and stumbling blocks upon you and my word which you stumble at out of the mouths of Babes and stammerers shal be unto you precept upon precept line upon line here a little and there a little that ye may go fall backward and be broken and snared and taken and your whole way shal be as sl●ppery places in the dark and ye shal be driven on and fall therein and you shall look to your Seers but behold darkness they shall not be able to guide you they shal be as blind as your selves and though they shall flatter you with the name of Sion so long as you feed and pay them and cry peace peace while you honour them with your thanks for their pains and with your praises and put into their wide mouthed purses and shall say we see yet the vision of that destruction that is coming upon you and them shal be as a Book sealed a thick cloud shall cover them the day shal be dark over them the Sun shall set upon them and it shal be night unto them so that they shall not divine yea the understanding of all your prudent ones shal be brought to nought and the sword of the Lord shal be upon the Arme of the Idol Sheepheard and upon his right Eye his Arme shal be clean dryed up and his right Eye utterly darkned and when it shal be thus with you all that your feet are stumbling upon the dark Mountains and you tumbling up and down like a wilde Bull in a Net not knowing which way to get out of your perplexities and shall have wrestled so long in chains of darkness till ye come to that utter darkness which is the portion of all them that suppress the Light and their judgement at the great day now dawning upon the world though it sleeps and sees it not then shall you awake and remember that you had warning in time but would not receive it yea this word now spoken to you shall stand as a witness over your heads for ever and ye shall know that I the Lord have sent my Servant to speak all these words in your ears at this time in this place and thereby to the three Nations whose chosen Servants and Representatives ye are saith the Lord Almighty whose Counsel shall stand in the midst of all mans thoughts and who will work and none shall let it What shall one then answer the Messengers of the Nations even this that the Lord hath founded Zion and the poor of his people have betaken themselves unto it but all luxurious wantons and covetous worldlings all formall professors and dissembling hypocrites painted Sepulchers and whited walls base back-sliders and filthy lyars hyreling Priests and fawning Prophets and all proud oppressors wicked opposers and persecutors of Christ in his people can have no share in it but are shut out into the lake and gone down for ever with the uncircumcised into the pit which hath shut her mouth upon them there world without end to be confounded Given under my hand as that Testimony of Jesus which was given me in charge from him to deliver by word of Mouth if I might be heard at the time and place forenamed and now to give forth to the view of men in writing the truth of which I am made willing by the power of God upon me to seal if called thereunto and give testimony to with my blood Samuel Fisher THE SCORNED QUAKERS Second Account of his second attempt to give testimony to the truth of Jesus wherein is shewed both why and what so far as the Lord should have assisted he should have spoken by Commission from God had he had permission so to do by men to the Parliament and Ministers and people met together at Margarets in Westminster on the 24 day of this 7. month 1656. being the day appointed by them for their first publick humiliation ON the 22. day of this 7. month 1656. I even I Samuel Fisher being then in the City and happening to take notice of the Parliaments ordaining two dayes the one being by the joynt agreement of the Protector with them the 29. of the 8. month 1656. for all these three Nations together with them the other being the 24. of this 7. month 1656. set apart more peculiarly both by and for themselves as dayes of publick fasting and prayer for the humiliation both of themselves and of these Nations That notice I took passed by me as a thing of nought not taking any impression then upon my Spirit neither wot I then of any other thing but of returning to my own outward home soon after even so soon as I should have finished a transcription of my first account which that night I did well nigh finish also Nevertheless the next morning when I awaked I was with the Lord and his command came upon me to go again unto the Parliament and what people should be met together with them on the morrow and to give forth among them what he would give in unto me which what it should be yet I distinctly knew not which word was more black and more bitter in my belly than the f●rmer that came unto me before and by how much I gathered by my first entertainment that in this second service I should be less welcome and more troublesome to my self and them by so much was I tempted by the evill one to say as his servants out of fleshly fears have done before me Lord send by the hand of whom thou wilt send for thy word is made such a derision and reproach that its in vain to make mention of it any more in thy name for they will neither hear nor receive it thus though the Spirit in me had a willing ness to go yet a Lyon being in the way the flesh was very weak and fearfull nevertheless waiting from thenceforth with fasting on the Lord till the day after this service and their fast was fully over not without some weeping and supplication the Spirit of the Lord who was greater in me than he that is in the world waxed stronger than either he or I and did prevail so that in the pure fear of the Lord wherein onely his secrets are seen if not without any further fear yet without any further fainting for fear of any fleshly foes and at the will of the Lord which whatever became of me and of my house I saw was worthy to take place against mine own I at last very quietly and freely gave up to go and so was with them at the time appointed where hearing two of their three Ministers and abiding with much patience till they had fully done in the pure heat of my Spirit in which the word of the Lord even like a fire was often kindled so that my heart waxed very hot within me at last having a fit standing behind the seat of the houses Speaker I began to speak as the Spirit mov'd and gave utterance to me