Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	heart_n	holy_a	truth_n	6,965	5	5.2320	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35528	Of the unity of the church a discourse written a thousand four hundred and thirty years since, in the time of Decius the persecuting emperor / by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr ; most usefull for allaying the present heats, and reconciling the differences among us.	Cyprian, Saint, Bishop of Carthage.; Fell, John, 1625-1686.	1681 (1681)	Wing C7714; ESTC R29694	19,253	46

out of the Church scatters and makes havock of it It 's our Lord's saying I and my Father are one And again it 's writen concerning the Father Son and holy Spirit These three are one And now can any one believe that this unity which proceeds from the Divine immutability and is consolidated by heavenly mysteries can be rent asunder in the Church and divided into parts by the discrepancy of the jarring wills of men He who keeps not this unity holds not the law of God nor the belief of the Father and the Son nor the faith by which he should be saved This Sacrament of unity this indissoluble band of concord is represented to us in the Gospel by the coat of Christ which was not divided at all or parted but the soldiers casting lots upon his vesture who among them should wear it it remain'd whole and entire The scripture saith The soldiers said among themselves concerning this coat without seam woven from the top throout Let us not divide it but cast lots for it whose it shall be That garment represented the unity which descended from above that is from heaven and the Father which was not to be torn and cut by any who became possessor of it but he was to have a firm and entire possession thereof He cannot have the garment of Christ who rends and tears his Church So upon the other side when after the death of Solomon the Prophet Ahijah met with King Jeroboam on the way he rent the garment he had upon him into twelve pieces saying to him Take thee ten pieces for thus saith the Lord God of Israel Behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and I will give ten tribes to thee But he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake and Jerusalem's sake the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put my name there Thus when the twelve tribes of Israel were to be rent asunder the Prophet Ahijah presignified it by rending Jeroboam's garment But because Christ's people cannot be torn in sunder therefore his coat which was wove throout and of an entire piece was not parted and shared by the souldiers whose fee it was It 's being undivided and the parts of it being closely and imperceptibly conjoyned is a mysterious emblem of that concord and union which ought to be between all who have put on Christ What person therefore can be so impious so perfidious so raging mad with discord as to imagin he can compass or dare to attemt the rending the unity of the Godhead the garment of the Lord or Church of Christ He himself hath instructed us in his Gospel saying that there shall be one fold and one shepherd And can any one imagin that in one fold there should be many shepherds or many flocks The Apostle Saint Paul recommending to us this unity intreats and exhorts saying Now I beseech you Brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speake the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joind together in the same mind and in the same judgment And again he saith Forbearing one another in love endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace Can it be thought that any one departing from the Church can subsist and live the man who raises new fabrics for himself when it was told Rahab by whose house the Church was prefigur'd Thou shalt bring thy Father and thy mother and thy brethren and all thy Fathers house home unto thee and it shall be whosoever shall go out of the doors of thy house into the street his blood shall be upon his head and the Sacrament of the passover instituted in Exodus contains no other lesson then this that the Lamb the slaying of which prefigured Christ's death should be eaten in one house The Lord enjoyn'd that it should be eaten in one House and that nothing of it should be carried abroad The flesh of Christ the Holy of the Lord is not to be cast out of doors nor have Believers any other house besides the Church which is but one The holy Ghost in the Psalms designs and expresses this house this lodging of unanimity when he saith It is God who maketh men to be of one mind in an house In the house of God in the Church of Christ the loving inhabit the kind and simple continue therein Therefore the holy Spirit appear'd in the shape of a dove that innocent gentle creature which is not imbitter'd with gall bites not fiercely with teeth nor violently tears with talons These creatures love the places where men dwell keep to the same nest both the mates hatch their young when they fly abroad they go in flocks they pass their age in mutual converse in their billing together they express in a manner the kiss of Charity and in all points fulfil the law of unanimity This simplicity is to be sought after in the Church this charity to be acquir'd that our brotherly love may imitate that of doves our mildness and gentleness equal that of sheep and lambs What hath the fierceness of wolves the madness of dogs the deadly venom of serpents and the cruelty of savage beasts to do with a Christian's breast We are to rejoyce when such are cut off from the communion of the Church least they devour the doves and sheep of Christ or poyson them with their infectious contagion Sweet and bitter cannot incorporate or dwell together neither can darkness and light rain and sunshine war and peace dearth and plenty drought and moisture tranquillity and tempest It is not possible for the truly good to depart from the Church The wind carries not away the good corn nor doth a tempest throw down the well rooted tree It 's the light chaff which the wind drives about and the decaied stock which the storm blows down These are they whom the Apostle John execrates and smites saying They went out from us but they were not of us for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us Hence heresies have frequently been and still arise while the perverse mind retains not peace and perfidious discord abandons unity Which things the Lord permits and suffers leaving to men their liberty of will that when our hearts and minds are tried by this test of truth the integrity of the faithful may be as manifest as the light The Holy Spirit warns us of this by the Apostle telling us that heresies must be that the approved might be made manifest By this the faithful are tried and the perfidious detected so that even here before the day of Judgment there passeth a discrimination between the just and unjust and the chaff is separated from the good grain These are they who of their own heads without any warrant from

OF THE Unity of the Church A DISCOURSE WRITTEN A Thousand Four Hundred and Thirty Years Since In the time of Decius the Persecuting Emperor By CYPRIAN Bishop of Carthage and Martyr Most usefull for allaying the present heats and reconciling the differences among us Printed at the THEATER in Oxford 1681. To the READER WHen the Idolatrous violence of heathen Rome under the Emperor Decius attemted the extirpation of the Christian Faith and brought on the seventh bloody persecution Novatian a Presbyter of the Roman Church separated himself from the communion thereof and became leader of a dangerous schism upon suggestion that others were polluted by the conversation of ungodly men and favourd those who were Idolatrous reproching them with the titles of Apostats Idolators and Jews as Pacian informs us Which most unseasonable rupture exceedingly weakned the hands of the Orthodox Christians and as S. Cyprian expresses it became another persecution unto them In this unhappy state of affairs when Idolatry destroied from abroad with all possible violence and Schism divided with like heat and earnestness within the good bishop of Carthage S. Cyprian thought it lay upon him for the privilege of the pope of Rome had not then placed his Church above admonition nor his infallibility set it beyond instruction to endeavor the reducing the dissenters in that Church whose godly labors had very great effect bringing back into communion several of the most eminent partizans in Schism and thereby many others also who by large pretences to godliness and the name of some pious men drawn aside into the party gave reputation to it I need not say how parallel a case we have in the Church of England When we are now assaulted by the plots and machinations of Idolatrous Rome we are molested by domestic dissentions from within upon the same pretences that we are polluted with the conversation of the Vngodly and favor those who are Idolators are lukewarm Professors Popishly affected and protestants in Masquerade It would be most happy if the parallel could be advanc'd yet farther and that as the advices of the holy Bishop and Martyr S. Cyprian were efficacious heretofore they may again be so on the like occasion He being dead above fourteen hundred years since yet speaketh and his discourses cannot be imagin'd to be levened by interest or passion and therefore they are faithfully translated into our English tongue and presented to the view and consideration of Dissenters among us The Christian Church stands under the same terms of duty to God and man as heretofore it did we have as strict obligation to Vnity among our selves Obedience to those who are over us in the Lord as had our first forerunners in the faith We are as forcibly bound to join in the same public Worship as they were and Excommunication especially that which the Schismatic voluntarily executes upon himself will be as penal and as certain a prejudice of the judgment of the great day as it was esteem'd in the primitive Church and 't is declar'd to be by Tertullian And not only the guilt but also the danger of Division is now as great as it was ever heretofore according to the saying of S. Paul If we bite and devour one another we shall be destroied one of another God Almighty grant that we may see at least in this our day the things belonging to our peace before they be hid from our Eies THE Holy Martyr S. CYPRIAN Of the Vnity of the Church WHEREAS our Lord instructing us hath said You are the salt of the earth and commanded us to be simple as to the doing any wrong and yet withall to join wisdom with our simplicity what can be more sit and becoming us then that with watchfull diligence we should endeavour to understand both what are the ambushes of our crafty enemy and how to avoid them that we who have put on Christ the Wisdom of God the Father may not seem destitute of wisdom in securing our salvation for we are not only to fear that persecution which by open force attemts the overthrow of the servants of God T is easie to be cautious where the hazard is manifest The mind is prepared before for the combat where the enemie professes himself Then is he most formidable and most to be took care of when he secretly approches and under a fraudulent pretence of peace by an undiscernible motion steals upon us insensibly from the practice of which methods the Devil has the name of Serpent for such hath bin always his craft and so dark and conceled from all view is the fraud by which he circumvents the sons of men Thus in the infancy of the world he enterprizd upon and by mixing flattery with lies he decieved our unexperienced Forefathers thro their unwary credulity Thus when he attemted our Lord he secretly approched as if by stealth he meant to deceive him but he was immediatly understood and as soon repulsed and vanquishd because he was discoverd and known Whence we may learn to decline the path of the first Adam and pursue the steps of Christ the victorious that we may not again unawars be entangled in the snare of Death but being provident against danger we may at last enjoy the purchased immortality But how can we attain the fruition of this immortality unless we keep those commands of Christ by which death is to be vanquish'd and subdued according to that counsel and saying of his If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments And again Ye are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you Such who are thus minded and resolved he stiles the couragious and stable founded upon a rock of vast bulk and strength firmly compacted and consolidated by an unshaken immovable constancy against all the storms and tempests of the world Whosoever heareth saith he these sayings of mine and doth them I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock And the rain descended and the flouds came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not because it was founded upon a rock It is our duty therefore to regulate our goings by his precepts and to learn and do the things he taught and did for with what face can any one profess he believes in Christ while he neglects to do what he enjoyns to be don or expect to reap the reward of faith who is unfaithful in the observation of his commands It cannot be but such a one must stagger and wander to and fro being hurryed about by the spirit of error like dust driven by the wind Nor shall he by his walking forward ever reach salvation who keeps not the saving way of truth But we must not only take care to decline the Devils more obvious and manifest attemts but those which his subtile craft and fraud hath laid in the dark the more easily to entrap us For what artifice more fine