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	pray_v	prayer_n	14,070	5	6.7931	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42817	A loyal tear dropt on the vault of our late martyred sovereign in an anniversary sermon on the day of his murther.	Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.	1667 (1667)	Wing G813; ESTC R23392	16,431	44

Heaven but none over themselves They were Gods Servants though they obeyed their appetites and his children though no better than those that they accounted of their Father the Devil Thus had men got the knack to be religious without religion and were in the way to be saved without salvation This was one of the grossest abuses of Religion that our Disorders brought upon us whereby it was taken from its foundation of Vertue and Holy living and placed in emotions raptures and swelling words of vanity And when these had kindled the imagination and sent the phansie into the Clouds to flutter there in mystical non-sense and when it was mounted on the Wings of the Wind and got into the Revelations to loosen the seals pour out the vials and phantastically to interpret the fates of Kingdoms when it flew into the Tongue in an extravagant ramble and abused the Name and Word of God mingling it with canting unintelligible babble I say when the diseased and disturbed phansie thus variously displayed it self many made themselves believe that they were acted by the Spirit and that those wild agitations of sick Imagination were divine motions And when this fire was descended from the phansie to the affections and these being exceedingly moved by those vain and proud conceits caused tremblings and fomings convulsions and extasies in the body all which are but natural diseases if not worse and just like those odd exstatical motions of the Devils Priests when they come foming from his Altars these I say the wild phantasticks had learnt to ascribe to the blessed and adorable Spirit And when their phansies being full of turgid notions and their bodies in an extasie they dream'd of strange sights voices and wonderful discoveries which were nothing but the unquiet agitations of their own disordered brains These also were taken for divine Revelations and the effects of the Spirit of God shewing it self miraculously in them Briefly then and in sum Every humour and phantastick unaccountable motion was by some represented as the work of that Spirit to which they are most opposite Thus when warm and brisk sanguine presented a cheerful Scene and filled the imagination with pleasant Dreams these were divine Illapses the Joys and Incomes of the Holy Ghost When heated Melancholy had kindled the busie and active phansie the Enthusiast talks of Illuminations New Lights Revelations and many wonderful fine things which were ascribed to the same Spirit And when Phlegm prevailed and had quencht the phantastick Fire rendring the Mad man more dull and unactive then the Spirit was withdrawn and the man under spiritual darknesse and desertion And when again Choler was boyled up into rage and fury against every thing that was not of the fond Cut and Measure this also was presumed to be an Holy Fervour kindled by that Spirit whose real Fruits are gentleness and love And now after that which I have said on this occasion it may perhaps be necessary to add that I hope none here will be so uncharitable or so unjust as to think that I go about to disparage the Spirit of God and its influence which as I ought I adore and reverence and because I do so I think it fit to represent and shame the blasphemous abuses of it which would expose the most Divine things to scorn and make them ridiculous And that the Holy Spirit hath been thus traduced and injured and is still by great numbers among us 't would be shameful not to acknowledge And I add that my zeal and reverence for the realities make me thus sharp and severe to the Counterfeits Nor do I think that folly and phantastry is to be spared because they wear the stollen Livery of things venerable and sacred Therefore to go on this was a kind of Religion that the corruption of it bred among us A Religion conceived in the Imagination and begot by Pride and Self-Love which gilded the Professors of it with all the glorious names and priviledges of the Gospel And when they had encircled their Heads with their own phantastick rayes and swoln their Imaginations into a Tympany of ridiculous greatness they scornfully contemned all but their Darling-selves under the notion of the Formal the Moral and the Wicked and proudly pitied the poor and carnal World that is all that were not of their conceited pitch and elevation And having thus dignified themselves and debased others they herded together drew the Church into their little Corners and withdrew from the communion of others who had less conceit though more Christianity They bid us stand off lest we should have polluted them by our unhallowed approaches and having made us as the Heathen and the Publican they cried Come out from among them The true Church soundness of Iudgment purity of Doctrine and of Worship if men would believe them was confined to their gang just as they were to the Corners of Africa of old when their Friends the Donatists were there Thus did they swell and swagger in their Imaginations till some other Sect as well conceited as themselves endeavoured to take their Plumes from them and to appropriate those glorious prerogatives to their own party And then they bussled and contended Here the Church cried one nay but 't is here cried another till a third gave the Lye to them both and then the Scuffle grows warm of Pride against Hypocrisie the Self-conceit of one Sect against the Pride of another and all against Sobriety and Truth This among some was the power of Godliness this the spirituality of Religion under pretence of which all reverence to things sacred was destroyed For when this Spirit had got into the Pulpit and set up the Cry of the Purity and Spirituality of Worship it never left canting on the Subject till mens Tongues and Minds were fired against every matter of decency and order as formal and Antichristian And so far had it prevailed as to drive those of warm affections and weak heads from all due external Reverence to God and Holy things And these well meaning people being frighted with the terrible noise of Popery Superstition and Antichristianism things they had learnt to hate but not to understand boggled and flew off from every thing their furious Guides had marked with these abhorred Characters though it were never so innocent and becoming And thus a rude and slovenly Religion had made its way into the World and such a sordid carelessness in matters of divine Worship that should a Stranger have come into the Assemblies that were acted by this Spirit he would not have imagined what they had been doing and that they were about Holy Offices would perhaps have been one of the last things in his Conjecture Thus bold and sawcy talk had crept into mens Prayers under pretence of Holy Familiarity with God nauseous impertinent Gibberish under the notion of Praying by the Spirit and all kind of irreverences in external demeanor under the shelter of a pretended spiritual Worship Thus had