Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A42783
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The further vindication, &c. of Mr. Owen consider'd in a letter to a friend
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Gipps, Thomas, d. 1709.
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1699
(1699)
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Wing G779A; ESTC R213345
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19,437
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28
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THE Further Vindication c. OF Mr. Owen Consider'd in a LETTER to a Friend SIR IN Obedience to your Commands I send you here a short Account of my Thoughts concerning Mr. O's Further Vindication c. In the way of Writing he has taken up he is not I believe to be parallel'd having out-done all Men living a Bar and half except haply two or three of the United Brethren who have sufficiently expos'd Mr. Baxter and Father Alsop I shall not so much as endeavour to requite him Prov. 26. 4. R. R. being oblig'd to the contrary and having already engag'd my self thereto by Promise which I will religiously observe For which Reason you must not expect here a particular Answer or that I should follow him step by step My Work then as well as Yours would be endless and it would be difficult for me not to retort some of his ill Language and discover many of his Misrepresentations or Mistakes which he is not capable of enduring nor you willing to be troubl'd with All my Design and I suppose your expectation is that the whole Argument be laid plain and open unto the view of any one of common Sense This I propose to my self to do in the Order of the Sermon and as briefly as I can And first you must remember that Mr. De Laune severely tax'd the Church of England as guilty of diminishing from the Word of God by leaving out the Titles of the Psalms in our Liturgy Translation and that I undertook the defence of this Omission first from the uncertainty of the Titles being Canonical Now I submit it to your Judgment or any observant Reader 's weighing the Arguments on both sides as they are to be found in Rem and in R's on R's whether Mr. O. who is Mr. D's Vindicator has given a convincing Proof of the Certainty of the Titles being Canonical I say this is submitted to your Judgment without more ado This notwithstanding I shall here have occasion to repeat some things and observe others de novo which will minister some further satisfaction in this controverted Point Mr. O. Vind. p. has not stuck to pronounce me a Blasphemer and to give me words of Brass because I affirm'd many of the Titles were to no purpose at all nay he will not allow that my suppos'd Ignorance can make any Attonement for me tho' God himself winked at the times of Ignorance But let us look back unto the Rector's obvious meaning Mr. D. contended that the Titles unfolded the Mysteries of the Psalms the Rector deny'd that they serve to any such purpose at all R. R. p. 15. Ex. gr A Psalm a Song c. These Titles unlock no Mysteries that I know of and if they must needs be call'd Keys they want Wards Other Titles are infinitely more Mysterious than the Psalms themselves It cannot be thought the Holy Ghost meant to give us them as Keys to open the secret Sense of the Psalms that would be to explain obscurum per obscurius which I am perswaded the Spirit of God would never have done When Jesus Christ expounded his Parables he made 'em clear as the Sun Besides whereas the Mysteries of the Gospel are confirm'd out of an abundance of Passages in the Psalms I do not find one Title brought to prove any one Mystery tho' indeed some Fathers who delighted Ludere campo Scripturarum as Jerom speaks took a liberty to find out I know not what Mysteries in the Titles But to return R. R. p. 13. I pleaded formerly that the Chaldee Paraphrase the Syriack Arabick and the LXX Version generally us'd by the Hellenistical Jews and the Christians for several Ages differ much from the Hebrew that Gregory Nyssen observ'd there was not an intire Agreement between the Christians and the Jews about the Titles especially of Psal 2 3 4 5 6 8 c. That this Father asserts not the Divine Authority of the Titles but Ecclesiastical Custom By the way note that Mr. O. has declin'd giving any sort of Answer to this Testimony of Nyssen Synop. Crit. I add Grotius believ'd Moses was not the Pen man of the 90th Psal Eben Ezra affirms the 6th Psal was compos'd not by David as the Title has it but in the Captivity by some other Person Doth it not follow hence that according to the judgment of these Churches and these Authors the Titles are not Canonical at least not certainly so And are they to be all damn'd for so many Blasphemers It might have suffic'd Mr. O. to have let alone the charge of Blasphemy which I fancy is a little too much and to have contented himself with ranking me among Dunces tho' at the same time you see I have some not contemptible Company I do not know any better way to clear this Matter than by considering the Titles of the several Books of Scripture some whereof are most certainly not Canonical not one of a certainty such and some doubtful The first Section of Moses's Pentateuch is in Hebrew call'd Beresith but in the LXX Genesis and in our English Translation The first Book of Moses called Genesis Are we Dissenters and all yea and all Christendom Blasphemers for departing from the Hebrew The truth is I do not believe the Author of the Pentateuch divided his Work into Five Sections or Books but the Church of the Jews who for convenience intituled each Section from the first word of it tho' the LXX more judiciously from the principal design and matter contain'd in those Sections I prefer the Title of the LXX to that of the Heb. in the Historical part of the Kings In Heb. we find the First and Second Book of Samuel in the LXX more properly and truly call'd the First and Second Book of Kings Samuel died 1. Sam. 25. The rest of this and the next Book was not neither could be written by Samuel nor concerning him but the Kings of Israel and Samuel himself is I conceive comprehended in Kings being the Supreme Judge The Heb. divides the Psalter into Five Sections Are we and the Dissenters all Blasphemers for leaving this Division out of our Translation If it be answer'd that some Heb. Copies have not these Five Sections or Books of the Psalter which I know not nor will trouble my self to examin I ask which are the true and uncorrupted Copies for both cannot be and why do we follow the latter Copies rather than those which are 〈◊〉 in all Men's hands The Books of the Prophets are thus intitul'd The Book of the Prophet Isaiah c. and the Apostles Epistles thus The Epistle of Paul to the Romans c. I cannot think the inspir'd Prophets and Apostles set these Titles on the head of their Books or Letters For they prefixt their Names themselves at the beginning and as part of the Body of those Books and Letters but the Titles on the top were added for conveniency There needed no Inspiration to do this