Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	holy_a	lord_n	work_n	7,405	5	5.2371	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A80782	An abstract of some late characters. Or, how the principall means appointed for our reformation is become the maine fuell of our wickednes. Laid downe in sundry characters of L. Bishops. Dumb dogs. Non-residenciaries. Men-pleasers. Unpreaching ministers, that edify to damnation, by their scandalous living. false wresting. mis-applying the Scripture. So turning the truth of God into a lye, that they may discourage the godly; incourage the wicked. In which the blind world may see, to their shame, how Satan guls them with a multitude of misprisions, and false surmises against the godly; that so he may barricado [sic] their hearts against all good. Necessary to be knowne in these times of discovery.	Cranford, James, d. 1657, attributed name.; Craufurd, James, 17th cent, attributed name.	1643 (1643)	Wing C6851B; Thomason E67_35; ESTC R7704	68,958	47

upon him the office of a Pastor and yet not Feede his people that depend upon him To be a Watchman and yet not give the people Warning of ensuing Danger To be a Leader and yet not Instruct GODS people in the spirituall Warfare To be an Ambassador and yet not Declare GODS Message to the people To be their Physitian and yet not See to the peoples Health Doth he not make himselfe Guilty of their Miscarriage and Betray the Trust which was committed to him It cannot be denied Neither is there much difference betweene the Shepheards destroying the Sheepe with his owne hands or leaving them to the mercy of the Wolse Or of a Captaines giving up a Castle or not defending it against the enemy when it is besieged But I have farre Worse then these viz. Vnpreaching Ministers to acquaint you with and must therefore goe forward Secondly Vnpreaching Ministers doe Edifie to Damnation and by their scandalous living or by their Serpentine preaching do pull downe and destroy more then GODS Faithfull Preachers build up 1. Great are the Number even of those that preach well whose Lives are most Vicious and Abominable Though one of them were enough to stagger a whole Nation considering how conversant they are in and about those Divine and Heavenly Mysteries contained in the Word That their whole trade and profession is holinesse That they are his Ambassadors and represent his person who in Scripture is call'd The Holy-One yea Thrice Holy Holy Holy is the LORD of Hosts Esay 6. 3. whose Law is Holy whose Spirit is Holy whose Will is Holy whose Word is Holy who is Righteous in all his wayes and Holy in all his workes Psal 145. 17. making us also which are his servants an Holy people Deut. 7. 6. An Holy Priesthood 1 Pet. 2 5. His Holy Temples 1 Cor. 6. 19. Yea when they are appointed Patterns of Holinesse and have undertaken by their holy conversation and zealous exhortation to draw others to Holinesse and yet no whit partake of holinesse themselves but remaine without the least tincture thereof in their hearts and lives what can men thinke of it There was a Woman much spoken of in some parts of this land that lived in a professed doubt of the Dei●y Yea even after illumination and repentance she could hardly be restored or comforted Shee often profest that the vicious and offensive life of a great learned man in the towne where she dwelt did occasion those damned doubts in her mind How may it then stagger poore Christians that heare of an hundred such yea when they shall perceive them so much the worse by how much the more they are conversant in the word when the very meanes of their reformation for want of a good and honest heart becomes the Fuell of their wickednesse when they shall verifie and fulfill that Spanish proverbe Come Sancto cagá Diabolo They have eaten downe Saints and voyd forth Devills As that Viper is the deadliest which feeds the sweetest It was the saying of a Bishops Cook That all the Noble mens houses that he had ever lived in were ranke Puritans to his masters I wish we could not apply it to hundreds of the Ministry who justifie that proverbe The nearer the Church the further from God As it fared among the Jewes the nearer they were to the Sanctuary the further they were from Sanctity Or as one gives testimony of the Romane Clergy That Of all Christians Italians are the worst Of all Italians the Romans Of all Romans the Priests Of all Priests the Cardinalls and commonly the most leud Cardinall is chosen Pope Not that the word of GOD which is holy and just and good Rom. 7. 12. is the proper cause of their being the worse no more than the Sun shining upon a Dunghill is the cause of greater stinke or its heat reflecting upon venemous and banefull objects the b●eeder of horrid Serpents Well may it prove an occasion thereof or at least make manifest that which lay hid in the heart before as a furious Mastiffe dog is the madder for his chaine because it is so powerfull and operative that it will either quicken or kill either prove the sweet savour of life unto life or become the savour of death unto death 2 Cor. 2. 16. 2 Pet 3. 16. For none ever heard it but they were either the better or the worse by it It is like a fructifying Dew or raine which fals not upon any ground in vaine but will produce either the Herbs Flowers and fruites of Faith and good Workes Or the weeds and bryers of impiety and prophanenesse And still the more of this raine falling upon Clay the dirtier it will be Briefly as a Cholericke stomach will convert all meates into Choler and as Spiders will sucke poyson from the most fragrant flowers So a wicked heart will make a Temptation of every thing and the frequency of distempers will weaken the vertue of any receit He that shall eate but a Graine of Opium and increase the quantity every day shall be able at length to devoure it as Bread and digest that which would kill twenty others Againe Take the dead carkasse of a man and cloath it with a thousand garments you shall never make it warme because it wants the naturall heat within which those adventitious helpes might cherish So if a soule be dead to goodnesse though you feed it with a thousand precepts till it become a quick Library of learning a Magazeen of knowledge yet you cannot put the heat of holinesse into it because the living Principle is wanting Grace divine But let that sparke be first in it and then all these helpes will blow it into a flame as experience proves abundantly blessed be GOD For although these degenerate yet the story of GOD makes other Ministers no lesse good than wise But which is the misery one of the former will doe more harme and give more deadly wounds to the Church by his scandalous life and wicked example than twenty of the latter can doe good or heale againe by their conscionable Preaching and pious example Indeed they may seeme to build up no lesse with their good Preaching for those who in their acts are fooles may in their words be Philosophers then they pull downe by their ungodly living But it is otherwise For First Who will regard the words of a knowne dissembler that shrowd an Egyptian heart under the habit of an Israelite who like Ethiopians are white in teeth only every way else cole-blacke when resembling the Devill in Samuels mantle they are Christians in skin Atheists at Coare Have Jacobs voice Esaus hands and head GOD in their mouthes and Satan in their hearts whose life and profession is a continuall incongruity and his workes Antipodes to his words when his hand and tongue give each other the lye like some foolish minstrell that sings one thing with his mouth and harps another with his finger When they shall speake like Angels in

the Church live like fiends abroad Teach the words of God and doe the workes of the devill Secondly Who will not loath the good light of such candles for the stinke which the tallow yeelds As it fared with the Cardinall of Cremona and Popes Legate sent from Rome to London especially for this end to remove marryed Clergy men from their Cures who after he had made a long speech in disgrace of honourable marriage was found the same night committing folly with an whore And Honorius the second Pope of Rome who condemned of adultery all the English Clergie that had Wives and was taken himselfe the same night committing adultery Which made him scorned of the meanest as Jupiters adultery did discredit his thunder even among children The Romans laughed Sylla to scorne for that he being a man most intemperate did notwithstanding exhort and compell others to sobriety temperancy and frugality And the Venetians their Cardinall when in the time of their troubles he would earnestly exhort them in the Pulpit to Peace and concord but when out of the Church he sowed nothing but sedition and strife If we heare a Mountebanke undertake to cure the distempered heat of the liver whiles himselfe hath a fiery face will we beleeve him when one forewarnes others of that pit whereinto himselfe runs headlong Points others the way to Heaven but will not move a foot in that path himselfe excessively loves the world while he teaches others to contemne it Commends the crosse to others which himselfe abhorres What can we thinke but that he exhorts others to contemne riches and pleasures that he might be rich and voluptuous alone As the Foxe dispraised the Grapes he would keepe for his owne tooth Yea Thirdly Who will not both twit the man and scorne his counsell as that Citizen of Rome did Pope Innocent the third who perceiving him to make faire weather with Otho the fourth and Fredericke the second contending for the Empire and in a solemne and eloquent Oration hearing him speake much of the agreement and unity which ought to be among Christian Princes when privately he laboured nothing but to make enmity and strife betweene them Answered him boldly thus Holy Father Your words seeme to be of GOD but your deeds are thereto so contrary that they surely proceed from the Devill We may spend our spirits and Preach our hearts out to disswade mens affections from the love of this world if we imbrace it our selves they will never beleeve us For thus they will argue Certainely If these Ministers did speake as they thinke they would doe as they speake If they did thinke their doctrine were true and good they that preach it would live thereafter Wherefore in vaine doe we rebuke those sinnes abroad which we tolerate at home That man onely makes himselfe ridiculous that leaving his owne house on fire runs to quench his neighbours For which read Rom. 2. 19. to 24. 1 Cor. 9. 27. I know these men have a distinction a scurvy one to helpe themselves withall For if you seeme to mislike their doings they will answer You must doe as wee say and nor as wee doe Which is a bad excuse fit for so bad a cause As if they should say Wee would have you to be Godly but we will not be godly we would have you to be saved but wee our selves will not be saved An Argument more like to confirme them in Atheisme then to cleare their doubts For what will they thinke These and many more pretend it is good being religious and holy and presse others to it But they have some other by-ends in it for they are not ignorant of what they doe Therefore whatsoever they say we will not beleeve them But as they doe so will we doe and we hope to speed as well as they Not that it ought to be so For simply considered the confession of vertue is of no lesse consequence in his mouth that hateth the same for as much as truth by force doth wrest it from him And though he will not admit it in him at least to adorne himselfe hee will sometimes put it on Secondly neither are the people more prone to despise what they say then to imitate what they doe Like sheepe we are apt of our selves to erre Esay 53. 6. But if the Bell-Weather or Leading-Sheepe takes a vagary all the flocke will follow him Whence it hath ever beene the dangerous policy of Satan to assault principall men both in Church and State knowing the multitude as we say of Bees will follow their Master The facts of eminent persons become Examples Those Examples Lawes and it is naturall to men to follow the Law of fact before the Law of saith A visible patterne rather then a meere audible Doctrine Yea we refuse to be led by precepts but are easily overled by presidents My people saith GOD are lost like Sheepe Jer. 50. And what followes Their Shepheards have caused them to goe astray they have turned them away from me vers 6. From the Pastors example they all take fire as one Torch lights many Thus the multitude took fire from the chiefe Priests and Elders to Crucifie CHRIST and the souldiers likewise Matth. 27. 20. c. That many-headed Monster the Mutinous rout resemble Claudius the Emperour who as Tacitus observes did neither Love nor Hate but as he was provoked and induced thereunto by others d ee any of the Rulers or of the Pharisees beleeve on him John 7. 48. Pastors are the Glasse the Schoole the Booke Where peoples eyes doe learne doe read doe look GOD sets them for Copies of Sanctification unto their flock wherein every fault is both notable and dangerous For what scholar will not think himselfe excused in following his copy If the Rule or Square be crooked it cannot be expected the things that are applied to them should be streight 1 Cor. 8. 10. 11. 13. But we need no better proofe of this then our owne experience Doe not we see in most Parishes especially in the Countrey that of the Prophet fulfilled Like Priest like People Hos 4. 9 6. 9. Esay 24. 2. Doth it not commonly fare betweene the Pastor and his Congregation as it doth betweene the Figtree and the Vineyard wherein it is planted which if it be fruitfull it selfe all the whole Vineyard is fruitfull too but if it be barren it maketh all the Vines barren with it If the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch Luke 6. 39. that is If the wicked lead the wicked both goe to hell together The vicious life of a Pastor is like an excessive Rheume which rising from the stomach to the head doops down upon the Lungs and fretteth the most noble and vitall parts till all the members languish into corruption Men will follow their guides untill they have lost themselves 3. Neither is this all the mischiefe these Ministers doe for the people will not onely think their Pastors hypocrisie a sufficient warrant