Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	law_n	life_n	sin_n	22,698	5	5.7840	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44840	The good old cause briefly demonstrated with advertisements to authority concerning it, to the end, all persons may see the cause of their bondage, and way of deliverance.	Hubberthorn, Richard, 1628-1662.	1659 (1659)	Wing H3223A; ESTC R14167	10,984	17

so as that the Lamb and the Lyon may lye down together and none make each other afraid that all persons in all places may quietly and freely do their duties to God and each to other in true love sincerity and soberness as he by his Spirit shall respectively direct and command to his praise and the Spiritual and Temporal benefit and comfort one of another Said God to Pharoah by Moses Let my people go that they may serve me and if thou wilt not let them go I will shew my Power and wonders upon thee I will pour out my plagues upon thee and thy people Was not this typical And hath not this of late been the case in these Nations Consider it It hath been sufficiently known and felt that such men have of late gotten into Authority that would not hear tell of our Rights and Liberties what-ever smooth words they gave us but made Laws to punish us for soberly using them and yet even then some would seem to say Why have you not your Liberties your Civil and spiritual Concernments setled and continued unto you May not you be as good as religious as you will Are you not well When alas we felt the Distempers pinch us in all our parts and members Bonds and Imprisonments attending us every where spoiling of our goods and what not And none that pittyed us could relieve us nor tell us how long Be not you so led aside by the deceitfulness of Satan's Wiles and devices of evil men In love and for loves sake I beseech you be watchful be faithful be diligent in the discharge of your respective duties to God and man and while you have time p●ise it the night cometh in which no man can work improve all opportunities to the right end least that which is lame and halteth be turned out of the Way and then you spend your times in disputing contradicting and opposing each other until the simplicity be betrayed by the inventions and subtil craftiness of such as lye in wait to deceive that have mens persons in admiration for advantage the strange Woman that flattereth with her lip● speaking lyes through hypocrisie to betray both you and us of our Rights and Liberties which to you would be very sad and your fall more remarkable then others before y●● But as for those that fear the Lord and wait at all times upon him they are sure of deliverance and therefore do their duties quietly casting all care upon him that careth for them If any deceiver shall come with his new inventions and tell you that though you are not to meddle with other mens consciences yet you must be sure to satisfie your own consciences by taking care of the peoples souls setling and establishing Religion and Church-Government as your chiefest business your greatest Work and first to be done thereby to prevent and suppress Heresies Sects Schisms and Factions in the Church and that the defferring of it so long hath been the cause of such and so many errors and divisions amongst the people And thus run on as fast as his tongue can belye his heart for did not Sects Schisms Errors and Heresies begin with such false Teachers yea and with them shall they end Then do you seriously consider That the vain mind of man is forward and hasty to set out it self to work for God as Cain and King Saul offered sacrifice in their own Wills but without God and therefore against him man being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish his own righteousness submits not to the righteousness of God but turns the truth of God into a lye worshipping and serving the creature and forsaking the Creator who is God over all blessed for ever and rich unto all that call upon him The Lord led his Israel of old by a Cloud and by a Pillar of fire and so they moved or stood still as they were led And afterwards he gave them Laws Statutes and Ordinances whereby to worship him The Lord God never yet said to any people Go make your selves a Church-Worship Discipline or Government or settle for your selves a Way whereby to worship me The poor impotent people also waited at the pool of Bethesda for the moving of the Water And Christ Jesus his peoples Lord and Law-giver faithful in all his house as a Son promised and hath sent his holy Spirit the Comforter to lead into all truth to take of his and give unto us to this one Law-giver able to save and to destroy are his servants onely obedient and he their pattern in all patience and long-suffering even with joyfulness Also consider That the conscience and soul of man is a place for the living God to dwel and walk in where no Magistrate as such hath any business The souls of men is a Charge too great too high too weighty for you to undertake or meddlewith and like the former Builders of Babel wil be confounded in it if you so touch it The wickedness of the wicked therein shall come to an end and the Lord wil establish the just Do you onely settle us in our external Rights and Liberties establish them to us and defend us therein from fraud and violence of such as yet know not what spirits they are of but are disobedient ignorant of the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ that makes free from that of sin and death secure us in this particular and restrain all persons from abusing themselves and the creatures in riotous living by Authority in the hands of such men as hate covetousness and vain glory that know this spiritual Law Fear God and eschew evil This is your Business and our Right both by Birth and dear Purchase suffer it not to be with-held from us by stopping your ears at the cryes of the oppressed Hearken unto us that God may hearken unto you when you shall most need his help and trust the Lord Jesus Christ with his own work in our souls and consciences for they that dare take the charge of other mens souls upon them neither know their own souls nor yet their duties to God or man it 's out of your Sphere beyond your reach a work which neither God nor man hath committed to your Trusts not found in all your Records of the most Antichristian Idolatrous Ages onely you have several Constitutions and corrupted forms concerning Church-Governments Worship and Discipline which in the long and dark night of Apostacy have been ushered in by Popish Prelates and Priests and so craftily twisted and interwoven together with rooted in and depending upon the Civil Authority and the Civil Authority in with and upon them that many wise men think it a kind of Sacriledge or rather madness to sever them each from other and that the doing thereof may break both and drive all into confusion and be sure that sort of men most concerned therein will not fail to tell you so and withall tell you that you are to maintain a

Gospel-Ministry that otherwise the people will become heathens that they are the men to be so maintained that you must defend them from being reproved in the presence of their hearers whatsoever they say there and much more of that kind if you hearken to them and have but such a faith as stands in their Wisdom to believe them while it is evident to the children of light and other unbyassed men That hereby was the rise and this the root and foundation of all Antichristian Tyranny and that when man by his Wisdom and Authority meddles in like manner he onely builds Babel higher and higher until it fall about his ears as hath been seen The depths of Satans pollicies and deceits herein are such as few men are yet aware of but run on and are punished onely the children of light see him in his transformings and likenesses though adorn'd with never so curious a dress The Church of Christ never had desired nor wanted such helps from man to support her It 's the Mother of Harlots and abominations the Strumpet the strange Woman Jezebel that deceives the people with her fornications the worldly Teachers State-Ministers Antichrists Ministers that want such Authority for a worldly maintenance they that receive or seek for such maintenance by tythes or otherwise are the Hirelings the deceivers and none of Christs Ministers for Christ eever provided for his Ministers daylie bread wherewIth they were contented and freely went and preached the everlasting Gospel without help by mans Authority or taking careful thought what to eat or drink or wherewith to be clothed And thus he imploys many of his servants in this day of his Almighty Power that his great Work is so upon the Wheel that man is not able to stop it though he should fight never so fiercely against it He is inseperably in and with his Tremblers by his everlasting Covenant and they with him in spirit and truth worship the Father and live the 1ife of the Almighty and are an heavenly Host with him his righteousness is before them and the Glory of the Lord their Rereward they cannot be idle as others that sport themselves in the day-time nor silent but speak the things they have heard and seen with their Father and though they be persecuted afflicted and tormented as sheep for the slaughter by the wilfulness of some and ignorance of others yet is their love increased towards all men as knowing that he is worthy for whom they suffer such things who nevertheless wil avenge his own Elect that cry day and night unto him Tribulation to them that so trouble his servants and to them rest and peace with him which is their life What sober-minded man will say we the people have our Rights and Liberties which many of us have far adventured for while the aforesaid Antichristian yoke of bondage is upon our necks We have not our Liberties in our Persons or Estates nor are we in any better condition then slaves bond-men and bond-women our bodies and what else we hold and labour for at the wills of other men Divers of our Bodies haled to prisons and there kept for a year or years more or less as others please A great part of the increase of our Lands Stock and Labours Arbitrarily forced from us time after time and no Law to protect us from such violence have not divers of us been outwardly and frequently vexed and disquieted by long and tedious suits in Law our Goods and Cattel violently taken from us out of the Houses we live in and from the Plough to the wasting of many mens Estates hinderance of Tillage and Trades poverty and want of Wives and Children not for any thing we owe to any man but onely concerning the Worship of our God whom we serve in our Spirits in the Gospel of his Son and for conscience-sake towards him dare not assist and maintain the Antichristian Tyranny over us or others So likewise when any of the servants of Christ go forth in obedience to him to declare against sin and wickedness Are they not beaten stoned stocked imprisoned cruelly whipt and shamefully abused And have not some been stifled in Cribs nasty Dungeons and dirty Holes of the Earth friends not permitted to come into some prisons to relieve or comfort them Not to say much of the prevalency of the aforesaid sort of men what Acts and Ordinances they have obtained to support themselves over us by Tythes or otherwise how they do or may take Peace from us and alter mens conditions when and as they please of their preaching up and down what they like or dislike in Magistrates Parliaments Army and People Their prevalency in removing faithful Officers Civil and Military out of their Places of Trust bringing into those Places such persons as they know will serve their interests against our Liberties whereby Justice hath been turned backward Or how upon the same account many persons are unduly elected to serve in Parliaments Or of their striving now to hook in all interests against the Peoples Rights and Liberties I say not but it may concern them so to do now the Head of their Church with his Negative Voice and their Fathers the Bishops are fallen before them even so shall Babylon fall and never rise again Lamentations and Woes will be to such as pitty her Nor shall I say much touching our Rights and Liberties in other particulars as how many men have been as it were torn from their Fathers and Mothers Wives and Children their own flesh to serve in forreign Wars at the Wills of others and yet liable so to be without true knowledge of the occasion thereof their consciences satisfied therein or their Wives and Children provided for but rather left to beg or starve in the streets How divers faithful Members of the Army have been put out of their Imployments because for conscience-sake they could not go with their Arms to stand by approve of and justifie the Parish-Teachers in their way and others put out as illegally at the Wills of other men How uncertain and delatory proceedings at Law are The peoples ignorance of the Laws under which they live because of the multiplicity thereof and contradictions therein Of some Statutes part repeal'd and others part continued some before repealed again revived or part revived some limited to time some otherwise Laws in force to take away mens lives for Theft wherein no person hath been put in fear or danger of death Courts so divers and different in their manner of proceeding and tryals Exactions and oppressive Tolls and by-Laws in Corporations peculiar Jurisdictions ingrossing of Trades and trading therein Corporations not permitting such as have served the Common-Wealth in their Wars to exercise their Trades freely there Persons of other Nations ingrossing or taking up Trades wherein many of the poorer sort have usually been imployed and comfortably maintained their Wives and Children slavish Tenures of Land held at the will of the