Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	grace_n	holy_a	word_n	10,229	5	3.9528	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46221	Work for a cooper being an answer to a libel, written by Thomas Wynne the cooper, the ale-man, the quack, and the speaking-Quaker : with a brief account how that dissembling people differ at this day from what at first they were / by one who abundantly pities their ignorance and folly.	Jones, William, fl. 1679-1710.	1679 (1679)	Wing J1002; ESTC R12360	16,124	36

dolefully all that had either Honesty or Courage to stem or thwart the current of their Pride and Avarice They use the good things of this World with as much fondness and delight as ever other sinners did Nor does Righteousness alone serve to cloath them they wear and will do as good Cloth Silks and Camlets as the proudest of mankinde can do offering freely to stand proof that the sin lies onely in the Colour or the broadness of the Ribbon Their way of Good-fellowship is also become very fashionable and for their lasting commendation are now so conformable a people in that point that they very seldom or never shrink in the wetting not much mattering what the unsanctifi'd say of their petty deviations of their Drunkenness Fornication Adultery Anger Envy Hatred Malice Pride Covetousness Vain glory and Hypocrisie and that notwithstanding all these rare qualifications they are as pure and sufficient Saints as any the whole World affords This needs not be much wonder'd at Experience has given all people of sense sufficient knowledge of their baseness who by striving to fly far enough from all Decency and Order are yet at last become the most formal Coxcombs produceable in this age crying out wofully against all external Ornaments whilst themselves at the same time doat most wickedly upon a Quirp-Cravat copi'd from a chitterling Original The very best of them are so far from submitting to every Ordinance of man for the Lord's sake that they will no so much as do it to those of God's own appointment of which their slighting and refusal of the holy Sacraments may serve as a most sufficient proof Nor do they stop here neither but go on to a perfect hatred of all that have better moral or intellectual endowments or any more of this Worlds good than what is unfortunately fallen to their own share And yet our Thomas in very many places of his Canting Enterlude would fain be thought hugely courteous for his inviting of as many Religions as his poor Memory could hold to see some rare sight no doubt but quite forgot the Jews and the Mahometans the Greek and the Muscovian Churches 't is a wonder that these also had not been bid to his intolerable Farce wherein at once he discovers both his Malice and his Folly too knowing in his own Conscience if indeed he has any that those people which he so promiscuously heaps together are neither alike in Principles nor Life and therefore ought not to have been alike treated by him For what reason had he to herd Protestants among Beasts of prey or worry us as much as in him lay between the Lions and the Bears Are these the thanks he returns our first and best Reformers for putting the holy Scriptures into the vulgar tongue without which he undoubtedly would have been still as ignorant that the Word of God was ever given man as now he is in the meaning of it 'T was hardly possible for any but a beastly Quaker to make Ingratitude his Goddess or fall down to worship the Devil 's eldest Daughter The holy Scriptures might still have lain dormant in their sheets of Greek and Hebrew for any remedy he could help us to But if he thinks it any kindness that they are faithfully translated why should he abuse and vilifie those that did it and that laid down their lives also to justifie the truth thereof They upon whose very credit he for his part at least takes those sacred Writings if he thinks they are so at all to be the revealed Will of God They were indeed holy and learned men and therefore most certain it is they have not deceived us but sure I am 't is more than he knows nor had he ever any the least spark of divine Revelation to ascertain their integrity Yet still but for those men or some such Pious and Learned Protestants 't is more than probable he would at this day have taken as some others do the Apocryphal to have been of equal Authority with the Canonical Scriptures He therefore has done extreamly ill in putting Protestants amongst his delinquent Pupils For if he thinks us not honest why will he believe us if he does why should he think us damn'd as the inavoidable consequence of his wicked opinion does suppose If all that were not are not nor ever will be Quakers were are and will be still in darkness and in the way to Hell as fain he would have all believe then certainly he must conclude that not onely those learned and pious Protestants that translated the holy Scriptures into the vulgar Tongues but that even the holy Prophets and Apostles also all the Saints and Martyrs all the devout Confessors Virgins and Widows from the beginning of the world till James Nailor's time have their portion onely in that woful place Ah most wicked Wretch how or when hadst thou authority to exclude true Penitents from eternal life or from the benefit of that Redemption purchased for us by the bloud of the most holy Jesus We Protestants are taught and enjoyn'd by the Church of God under pain of everlasting ruine most unfeignedly to repent of all our sins past and carefully to endeavour for the future that we sin no more And that we pray to God to deliver us from all blindness of heart from Pride Vain-glory and Hypocrisie from Envy Hatred and Malice and all Vncharitableness From all Sedition privy Conspiracy and Rebellion from all false Doctrine Heresie and Schism from Hardness of heart and Contempt of his Word and Commandment That he would please to bring into the way of truth all such as have erred and are deceived and give us all increase of Grace to hear meekly his Word to receive it with pure affection and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit And with the holy Prophet that God would please to make us clean Hearts and renew right Spirits within us That he would not cast us away from his presence nor take his holy Spirit from us but mercifully give us the continual comfort of his help and establish us with his free Spirit and as a just acknowledgement of his Goodness endeavour all our days in our several stations to teach his ways unto the wicked that sinners may be converted unto him And now will such a sincere course and such humble Prayers as these stand us in no stead unless also we become Quakers God forbid Sure I am there will come a day in which 't will appear who serv'd God and who serv'd him not When our Thomas may perhaps wish to no purpose that he had never spent his time so idly in quest of nothing but incentives to Pride and Immorality nor had abus'd God's Servants and the meaning of the Holy Ghost as Saint Peter said some had done Saint Paul's Epistles In which saies he are some things hard to be understood which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the other Scriptures to their own

hath said expresly If we say we have no sin we do but deceive our selves and the truth is not in us But if Quakers are without sin what need they fear if forgiven all or which is much the same have nothing to be forgiven what judgements can they apprehend The very truth is all their pretences about these things are but mere Traps and Gins to catch the foolish and the silly in and those places which our Thomas pretends to take his pattern from are clear to other purposes and quite of other meanings than any he intends them for And this is evidenced by his fourth Page wherein he observes with a world of wit that Isaac trembled for having mistaken Jacob for Esau and then presently infers that Isaac was a Quaker A strange and a very choice way of arguing by which he makes him pay dearer for his inadvertence than ever Esau himself was forced to do Whereas in truth holy Isaac was quite another man was much given to Meditation and Prayers and so are not the Quakers Then Isaac was not it seems beyond the possibility of a mistake which Quakers affirm they are not subject to as having perceptions clearer than any body else and can most infallibly as the Blasphemous Muggleton was wont to say fix Woes or Joys a Blessing or a Curse irreversibly to all eternity But if Isaac was a Quaker and yet nevertheless did erre in so important a business why should it be impossible for another Quaker to erre also Surely it much behoves our second Tom of Bedlam to make an impartial and very strict enquiry into his own weakness and consider that the blindness of the understanding may be as ruinous at least as that of the Body and that it is not impossible for him or any other Quaker at this day to be under the same circumstances with those that have eyes but will not see that have ears yet will not hear nor understand lest they should be converted and live And then in his fifth Page by which alone we may judge equitably of all the rest he tells us that those people mentioned in the ninth of Ezra were the Quakers Meeting 't is well he did not say at Holy-well or Caerwys But to manifest his Worship's ignorance I humbly offer this toward a proof of the contrary That Ezra in the sixth Verse of the same Chapter said O my God I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee for our iniquities are gone over our head and our trespasses are grown up unto the Heavens Now those that know our Thomas much better than he does himself do assure me that Praying and Blushing is none of his way he never did so in all his life much less since first he turned his Tub into a Pulpit and that into a Drum to beat up for Voluntiers for the Prince of the air But then in the next place Ezra does most evidently acquit himself and his people of this charge For he arose and made the chief Priests the Levites and all Israel to swear and they did so according to the Law which most sufficiently proves that they were no Quakers and therefore our Cinque and Cater was most wofully mistaken in his pretence to a spiritual way of understanding He saies Ezra was a Quaker yet dares not forsooth do what that Quaker did though but according to the Law He would perswade us that all Quakers are guided by the same unerring spirit how then come they so much to disagree Ezra did blush but our Thomas can't Ezra did repent our Thomas won't Ezra and all Israel did swear according to the Law but our wise man of Gotham is endued with a greater light and knows better things In a word if the Quakers will neither blush nor repent or swear lawfully as Israel here did then most certain it is that neither those Israelites were true Quakers nor these Quakers true Israelites And thus 't is palpable enough that though our Quaker will not humble himself to the taking of a lawful Oath yet he does not at all boggle the telling of an untruth But why our Thomas should be so brisk in the false and so dull in the true notion of fear and trembling I cannot imagine unless to bubble poor weak and simple people with the fancy of his being some mighty Hero in Divinity and the onely Oracle of celestial mysteries But alas poor Soul this spiritual Bait won't take the poison of it has eaten quite through the Varnish and does of it self discover the poverty of the whole Plot. He pretends to fear and at the same time vouches himself above the state of a Saint Militant which if true would make fear a wost unnecessary thing for perfect love casteth out fear The Watchmen at our Saviour's Grave were afraid and became as dead men But the Angel of the Lord said to the holy Women Fear not ye for I know that ye seek Jesus which most plainly shews that the servile fear the Quakers are possessed with is perfectly inconsistent with the holy temper of such as in reality with zealous and humble confidence seek the Lord Jesus We are bid to come boldly to the Throne of Grace and 't was of the wicked onely it was said The Lord shall laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh But the righteous shall rejoyce in the Lord and all they that are true of heart shall be glad Psal. 64.10 And My soul said David shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful lips Our laps'd Sinner was therefore wise onely in his own conceit whom Solomon foreseeing gave necessary and just direction how he ought to be treated A whip saies he for the horse a bridle for the Ass and a rod for the fools back Prov. 26.3 And God himself denouncing wrath against such wicked Impostors as the Quakers are saies Wo to the rebellious children that take counsel but not of me that cover with a covering but not of my Spirit Isa. 30.1 But farther had he any thing of Ingenuity or Sence he 'd never have been so silly as to think that quaking or trembling as such could possibly be enough to denominate a just or a good man by yet is so fond of the Conceit as if there were no way possibly to Heaven but this and might as well have affirmed that to be surly and churlish ignorant and singular envious and unmannerly dissembling and hypocritical had been the onely way to have pleas'd God and the certain character whereby to know the inspired and the heavenly-minded from such as have onely what he thinks poor and despicable the gifts of Charity Humility and Obedience 'T is true he that has a guilty Conscience or carries any sin unrepented of about him may most reasonably fear and tremble And of such the holy Prophet said Psal. 9.20 Put them in fear O Lord that the Heathen not the Israelites may know themselves