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
A51515	The mount of spirits that glorious and honorable state to which believers are called by the Gospel explained in some meditations upon the 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 verses of the 12th chapter to the Hebrews : with some previous reflections upon that whole Epistle and the people of the Jews.	Wolseley, Charles, Sir, 1630?-1714.	1691 (1691)	Wing M2970; ESTC R32126	106,065	208

to accuse calumniate and misrepresent before God so these blessed Angels are constant Spectators and publick Notaries of all the Proceedings of the Church and all the Actings and Sufferings of every Member thereof in order to bear a faithful Witness before God and be a punctual Record thereof at the Day of Judgment And in this sense we are come unto them they are not only present in publick Assemblies but conversant in the Closet of every Saint and take an exact view of all their devout and fervent Addresses unto God upon this account it is that St. Paul tells us that the Apostles by their Preaching and Suffering were a Spectacle to Angels the holy Angels beheld their Spiritual Courage and Conquest with wonderful satisfaction and upon this account it is that St. Paul chargeth Timothy before the Elect Angels to look well to the discharge of his Work and Office because they are Witnesses appointed of God to take punctual notice of his Behaviour therein and the Presence of the Angels is made an Argument by the Holy Ghost for the well-ordering our selves and all our Actions in Church-Assemblies 5thly The Angels as they are God's Officers employed for the guard and security of the Church so they are also for the revenging of his Wrath upon their Enemies so it often was under the Old Testament and so it is under the New and will continue till the end that wretched prophane Herod who added to all his former wickedness to shut up John in Prison and after added to that addition to cut off his Head to please a Dalilah and at last came to make himself his own Idol by taking to himself that glory that should have been ascribed to God at last an Angel smote him and dispatch'd him to his own place by a woful and miserable Catastrophey the Angels stood all ready when our blessed Saviour was led to the Cross to have rescued him upon the least Command this our Saviour himself told the Jews when he was encompass'd with a Roman Guard he could upon request to his Father have more then twelve legions of angels to rescue and assist him which exceeded the number of Men the Romans then had in their whole Army for their Army at that time did not consist of twelve Legions and in the Revelations we find the Angels constantly employed by God as the great Executioners of his Wrath upon the Churches Enemies to the end of the World 6thly We are come to this innumerable company of Angels as to our truest Friends and most faithful Companions for they never leave us till they have brought us home 1st To the rest of our Souls in Heaven for they wait upon every dying Believer to comfort and chear his spirit so soon as ever it hath left the Body and safely to convey it into that Blessed fellowship above and into that glorious place and state of rest called Abraham's Bosom And 2dly They will be assisting and instrumental though it be effected by the mighty Power of God to call and raise the Bodies of the Saints out of their Graves at last when Christ comes to effect the first Resurrection he will be attended with all his Glorious Angels and by their Ministry the Dead in Christ shall rise first the Trumpet that will sound to summon them out of their ashes will be an Angelical sound probably the Voice of the Arch-Angel and when they arise out of the Earth they will together with all the Saints then living be caught up by the Angels and conveyed by them to meet the Lord in the Air the last office the Angels will have to perform and so will ever abide with him Whose heart would not burn within him upon the contemplation of these things that God should be such a lover of Men that the Eternal Son should by his death redeem them his own spirit by his influences come down and dwell in them and all the Angels in Heaven made their Guardians and their whole Ministry and Service employed on their behalf How blessed a condition does the Gospel instate us in above the Law in reference to this particular When Man first fell by sin the Angels became his most avowed Enemies and Executioners of Wrath that went out against him for the Cherubims stood with a flaming Sword to keep the Tree of Life and to shut Man out of Paradise he made his Angels Spirits and at that time his ministers a flame of fire When the Law was given upon Mount Sinai and Man considered only in his natural state the Angels were most dreadful and terrible in their appearance but now under the Gospel Angels and Men by the Blood of the Cross are embodyed into one Fellowship and Society united in and under one head engaged in the same Worship and Service and enjoy a sweet and most endeared communion each with other all which is fully insinuated and intimated by the Apostle in telling the Believing Jews they were come to this innumerable company of angels 4thly The Apostle tells them they are come to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in Heaven This is an expression of that part of the Catholick Church here upon Earth to which by the Gospel all Believers come and with which they are incorporated and imbodyed two things are intended hereby to shew the preference of the Gospel-state before that of the Legal 1st That instead of the Assembly of all the Males three times a Year at Jerusalem which is called in Scripture the great congregation they are come now to the great Assembly of all the Members of the true Catholick Church amongst Mankind to all the true servants of God both of Jews and Gentiles that any where call upon God in Spirit and Truth and that God would have such a general Assembly and such an universal Church of the first-born throughout all Nations without any farther respect to the Jews or their Church was a secret undiscovered till the Gospel Revelation came 2dly That this assembly consists only of real and true Saints such as have the right of the first born the great inheritance that men are born capable of in this World is the possession of Heaven at last those that obtain that are the eldest sons of this lower World and the first-born amongst Mankind in the Scripture sense and none obtain this inheritance but such as are eternally elected in Christ to it and therefore the Apostle when he names the Church of the first-born adds as explanatory of it whose names are inrolled in Heaven that is in the Lamb's Book of Life in the Roll of God's eternal purposes and councels there they are Registred and not in an Earthly Register as the Jews were this Church of the first-born is called in Scripture the first fruits of the whole Creation unto God and the Lamb they are said to be Heirs to God and Joynt-heirs with Christ they are made Kings and Priests unto God and so have

THE MOUNT OF SPIRITS THAT Glorious Honorable State To which BELIEVERS ARE Called by the GOSPEL EXPLAINED In some MEDITATIONS upon the 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Verses of the 12th Chapter to the Hebrews With some Previous Reflections upon that whole EPISTLE and the People of the JEWS Psalm 1.2 But his delight is in the Law of the Lord and in his Law doth he meditate day and night London Printed for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheap-side near Mercers-Chappel 1691. THE PREFACE TO THE READER 'T IS an uneasie Reflection but a very reasonable Supposition That no Person will view over this small Collection of some few uneven Thoughts with any Delight comparable to what I had in the composing of it those Satisfactions are I well know personal and in their nature not transferrable or else I would heartily remit them to every Reader the Meditations herein contained did I confess much affect and delight me while they were upon the Anvil though perhaps herein I shall prove to resemble a mean active Preacher that warms only his own Affections and starves those of his Auditors I have this to solace my self withal let the Effect otherways be never so small That I sought out these things for no other reason but because I my self had pleasure therein and originally designed an intire confinement of them to my own private satisfaction possibly by their publication I shall be told I have mistaken my Talent and medled with things that are too great and too high for an ordinary Genius and have brought my self under the correction of that old Axiom Prestat de Carthagine Tacere quam pauca dicere 'T is better to say nothing of Carthage than to say but a little I will not contend with this Reproof nor yet labour after any farther Excuse than what I find made for me in that good-natur'd modern Expression In magnis voluisse sat est The Matters here treated of are I well know of a sublime Nature and require the deepest Consideration and Caution and therefore I have all along proposed to my self what I am sure is the safest Method which is to walk by the Light of Revelation and take the Scriptures in all that I have said for my only Guide if Men will understand any thing aright of God's Eternal Councels and Designs touching the Making Ruling and Saving of the World here they must have it 't is to no purpose to hearken to any other Instructor but the Holy Ghost about these Matters for none knows the Mind of God herein but the Spirit of God alone the Wisdom and Philosophy of the World has after its utmost Enquiries and Pursuits after these things attained no farther but to record their own insufficiency and folly the Holy Scriptures as they are the great Luminary placed by God in this lower Firmament to inform and enlighten the rational part of the World in all Sacred Things so they are the Rule and the Standard by which all Divine and Religious Concerns are to be tryed and determined 'T is a sorry change and a very mean shift to forsake the infallible Determinations of God that he has transmitted unto us upon Record and by an Appeal from them to put Religion upon tryal by the failing uncertain Opinions and Practices of Men It ought to be made a perpetual Memorandum in the Church in order to their constant Direction that when our blessed Saviour came and the greatest Points that ever were debated on Earth were then on foot Whether he were the True Messiah or No And whether the Religion established by him was to dissolve and discharge the Mosaical oeconomy and of right to succeed it Our Saviour and the Apostles insist not upon any one Proof but what they fetch'd from the Old Testament not a word of the Church then nor any of those Humane Authorities the pressing of which upon the Minds of Men has so pester'd and disordered the World ever since and whenever they contested either with the Jews the Gentiles or with Satan himself they never used other Weapon than the Scriptures nor was any other Medium so much as once mentioned by them to determinate Divine Things by although that Age was as much filled with the Noise of Tradition and the Church as any that hath been since St. Paul when he is treating of the deepest Points flies to that Interrogatory Appeal But what saith the Scripture And I doubt not but the glorious State of the Church in the last times so much fore-spoke of will consist in a strict and close Agreement with the Canon of the Scriptures and appearing in the Splendor of an Entire Conformity to the Laws of Christ utterly rejecting all Humane Authorities and all such Constitutions of which Christ himself is not the Author and such as by which the Antichristian Fabrick has been chiefly erected 'T is of great remark That the last Item God gave to the Church of the Jews when the Spirit of Prophesie ceased and with which the Old Testament is closed was to prevent an invasion of Humane Traditions and to oblige them to an exact Conformity and Obedience to what he himself had prescribed them Remember the Law of Moses my Servant which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel with the Statutes and the Judgments And our Saviour's last Direction to his Disciples when he left the World was That they should teach all Nations to observe whatsoever he had commanded them to prevent all other Legislators from usurping Authority in the Church In the following Discourse I have also applied my self as much as the Matter would give me leave to the use of Scripture-Phrases as thinking to all Inquirers into these Matters those would prove the most acceptable Words and also because the Scripture is best expressed by it self Scripture-Notions sound best and are most properly utter'd in Scripture-Expressions and what in one place looks obscure is often so expressed in another as renders it obviously intelligible and easie we can never be too much inur'd to Scripture-Expressions because the Scriptures contain in them after an admirable manner a Sacred Language and Holy Dialect dictated by God himself for him and his People to converse together in here it is that holy Men have of old and all good Men to the end of the World will constantly learn in what Language to express their Prayers and their Praises and how to utter themselves in all their Approaches to the Most High and in whatsoever converse they shall happen to have with him 't is the Treasury of all Divine Utterance and Expression both from God to Man and from Man to God and which the Holy Ghost will principally make use of in all the intercourse that will be between Christ and the Church to the end of the World and will very particularly make such skilful in who are to bring down the Lively Oracles and to administer in Sacred Things

and super-exceeding Excellency of the Doctrine published and delivered the Gospel in the very kind and constitution of it utterly exceeding all the Dispensations of God that ever preceded it being the very natural genuine and proper Issue and Product of them all Divine Revelations since the World began tended to Christ and the Gospel as their ultimate End and Center Although God had by sundry Ways and by divers Persons both Angels and Men at several times distinctly declared his Mind to the World yet he never before spake by his Son this is the Memorial of the Gospel throughout all Generations that it was first published by the Lord and after confirmed by those that heard him it came first from the Oracle of his Sacred Mouth and was sanctified by his most Blessed Lips and upon that account well may it be called as it is in the 1st of Timothy The glorious Gospel of the blessed God 'T is true that all former Divine Revelations brought to us either by the Ministry of Angels or Men were the Voice of God and had him for their Author but herein lyes the peculiarity of the Gospel Glory above them all that now he speaks to us without any intermediate Instrument personally Himself in his Son he comes Himself from Heaven Tabernacles in Humane Flesh becomes Emanuel converseth with us and speaks Face to Face with us in our own Nature Let us with an Holy Astonishment as Moses said in another case turn aside and view this great Sight and cry out with the Psalmist in Holy Admiration Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou shouldest so visit him and consider deeply what infinite condescention was this that when nothing else would serve to recover the lost World God comes from Heaven himself to treat with us about our recovery so that no man can now reasonably say who shall ascend into Heaven to instruct us from thence or who shall fetch Divine Knowledge beneath from the Deeps for all that we need to know and all that we can know is brought home to our Dores is put into our Hearts and into our Mouths by God himself in the fashion of a Man and like to us in all things sin only excepted Two things the Apostle seems to insinuate in his very first entrance and the beginning of this Epistle God who at sundry times and divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son First That it was the same God that spake now that spake before by Moses and the Prophets and so prevents their taking prejudice against the Gospel as if it came from any other hand than the God of Israel or were built upon any other Foundation than Moses and the Prophets And Secondly That God speaking now by his Son we may reasonably expect to hear more than ever was yet known and all that we are like ever to know by way of Revelation from above such a Person as He may well be supposed to bring down all God's Errand to the World at once he has none greater to send by and upon that account it is that the Gospel times are called in Scripture the last times because no more Revelation is to be expected If we consider Christ as he is God he is exalted far above all Heavens and beyond all reach of Comparisons if we consider him in that conjunction as he was Man even in that state he is Heir of all things he is the First-born of every creature and in all things has the pre-eminence he exceeds the noblest of creatures the Angels those glorious Spirits who in their very make and constitution were nearest of kin of all others to their Creator and are called Elohim a sort of Gods for God never said unto any of them thou art my Son this day speaking both of Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection have I begotten thee but at the Son 's first arrival in the World to give an eternal Instance of his Divinity he commands all the Angels of God to worship him and to worship him with the greatest Prostration and Adoration imaginable for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 used upon this occasion intimates That the Apostle should treat so much when he is dealing with the Jews of the Preference of Christ above the Angels we may well conceive when we consider that he himself in this Epistle declares that the Law was the Word spoken by the Angels and Gal. 3. says that it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator not as if this were to be taken as Grotius and some learned men have conceived that the Law upon Mount Sinai was originally given forth by a created Angel there for it was most certainly published authoritatively by God himself there present nor is it any where said to be originally given forth by Angels but to be spoken by them and given forth by their Manage and Ministry In the 68th Psalm we are told The chariots of God are twenty thousand even thousands of thousands the Lord is among them as in Sinai by which 't is evident enough the glorious and eternal Jehovah was there personally present after a very peculiar and eminent manner And in Stephen's last Sermon he tells the Jews in that Historical Recapitulation of their whole Affairs that they had received the Law by the disposition of Angels and had not kept it So that the meaning is the delivery of the Law was by the Ministration of Angels and their ordering of things upon Mount Sinai though it was uttered by God himself but the delivery of the Gospel is singly by the Ministry of the Son of God in person And when we are told the Law was the Word spoken by Angels and that it was ordained by Angels it is in this sense and no other to be understood and well may it be so stiled if we reflect upon these several things 1st The whole heavenly Hoast of Angels those glorious Guards of Spirits that attend the Eternal Jehovah were all there present in a solemn and particular manner such as we no where else read of in their courses and order to execute what their Supream Lord came about and beholding with wonder and admiration the Wisdom of the Supream Legislator in giving forth those wise Laws to the World upon which the legal Dispensation was chiefly founded which was the reason perhaps made them so earnest afterwards to look down into the Gospel Dispensation having seen so much of the legal and been such Actors in it and behold the glory of that for by it the Apostle tells us expresly the manifold wisdom of God is made known unto them and by beholding the second Person incarnate they saw somewhat more of Heaven upon Earth then they could see in Heaven it self 2dly It was by the Ministry of Angels that those prodigious Terrors were effected by which the People were so

Petition of Mordecai and Esther he altered his purpose and had a mind to have all the Jews saved the first Law could not be altered nor reversed by their fundamental Constitution and therefore Abasuerus had no other way but he makes another Law after the same form and manner that he made the former wherein 't is thus decreed The king granted the Jews which were in every city to gather themselves together and to stand for their lives to destroy to slay and cause to perish all the power of the people and province that should assault them both little ones and women and take the spoil of them for a prey By which he downright settles a Civil War by two unalterable Laws in the Bowels of his Dominions and in all his Territories commands his Subjects to massacre and destroy each other nay even in his own Palace for upon this second Edict the Jews slew 500 Men in Shusan the King's Palace The last Monarchy of Rome had so far advanced Idolatry and carried on Satan's concerns that they ransack'd the whole Creation for Deities and arrived to Thirty thousand Gods and the Emperors came to such a degree of impudent Pride and Impiety as downright to deifie themselves the Kingdoms and Powers of the World have lain from the beginning in his hands and therefore 't is said upon the full recovery of the World The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ the Kingdom of the Mediator has consisted but of a few it pleasing God in his infinite Wisdom to declare the glory of that rather in quality than quantity This Kingdom of the fallen Angels is sometimes called in Scripture the Kingdom of Darkness and sometimes the Kingdom of Satan and he is himself sometimes called the Prince of this World and the Prince of the Power of the Air that old Serpent the Devil and Satan which deceiveth the World the original of it was Apostasie and Rebellion against the Supreme Soveraign and an endeavour to set up a Counter-Soveraignty in the creature against him and 't is carried on and will be till the end of his Reign with all possible counter-working to the Kingdom of the Mediator and all the gracious and glorious Designs and Purposes of God therein The chief of the fallen Angels is reckon'd the Prince of this Kingdom and all the fallen Angels and fallen Men unrecovered are embodied in it as his Subjects 't is carried on and supported by these two things First A malignant Opposition to God for his manage of the whole Affairs of the Creation by the second Person incarnate And Secondly By an insatiable appetite to throw off all Bonds and Ties of Obedience to their Supreme Soveraign and Maker and enjoy the uninterrupted possession of a lawless Life sutable to their degenerate and apostate Inclinations The woful state they arrive at by this to let us know no Man can oppose God and prosper is First Ever to labour and endeavour with a certainty of disappointment for the fallen Angels know very well their purposes and designs shall never be accomplished And Secondly To lye under a constant sense of ill doing and under guilt and terror in what ever they act And Thirdly To stand bound over to the dreadful Justice of God and be sentenced at the Judgment-Seat by that Man whom he hath appointed to the endless and utmost Misery and Horror of all which the fallen Angels and many of their adherents are sufficiently informed From the beginning God has not been pleased to set himself at any time against this Kingdom of his confederate Enemies and Rebbels by the Thunder of his Power and as it were most easie for him to do in a moment to grind them to Powder but in the profound depths of his Wisdom who is wonderful in councel and excellent in working suffers the continuance of it for great and holy ends and purposes and opposeth it and will at last utterly ruine it by a still small voice in those Methods by which the Mediator's Kingdom is to be erected that is the Laws of his Grace and the mighty Influences of his Spirit and hence it is that in every Generation we find a continued contest and opposition between the renewed and recovered part of the World and all apostate Angels and Men God contesting by his Grace and Spirit in the Hearts of his Servants all the violent Assaults that the Powers of Darkness the whole Race of degenerate Angels or Men could bring upon them and upon that account has had some faithful Servants in all Ages upon whose Fidelity and Ability in this way of Combate he has stak'd down his Interest and with whom he has trusted his Glory nor can he by this Method ever fail of the Glory due to him or by such an Adventure ever come short of it for 't is trusting his Glory with his Grace and the one stands upon as sure a foundation as the other and both in their nature immoveable Instances of this kind the Scriptures abound withal but that which in a particular case seems the most eminent of them all and most remarkable is the Case of Job and the Tryal he went through Whoever will nicely consider his Case shall find it a Story of wonderful distinction and circumstance the whole Business of Religion being by consent put upon tryal in him Job was declared by God himself and Satan deny'd it not to be the best Man then living one that had not his like in all the Earth but Satan objects unto God against him and affirms that though he was so eminent and had the priority of all the Religious Party then extant yet all his Religion was but Hypocrisie built upon a secular bottom and that if God brought him once to tryal it would appear so to be and himself manifested thereby to be a most notorious Hypocrite and Dissembler Had this in reality proved true Satan had carried his point for it had been an undeniable evidence that God had had no faithful Servants nor had there been any such thing as true and sincere Piety and Religion in the World for if the very best of all Men proved upon tryal but a rotten false-hearted Hypocrite the consequence had been very plain that all the rest of the same profession must needs have been much more so The tryal proceeds with all the possible advantage Satan could wish to obtain his end and he is permitted to go to the utmost extent of all the Artifices he had in order to stir up and provoke in Job all the exorbitant Passions unruly Ferments and irreligious profane Workings that belong to Humane Nature and usually appear upon such occasions in order to bring him to calumniatè Providence and even reproach God himself 1st By Afflicting his Body 2ly By Ruining his Estate And 3ly By laying him as to his present state and condition under the sharpest Judgments and severest Censures of his best and most