Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	true_a	worship_n	worship_v	7,455	5	9.1341	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26962	Naked popery, or, The naked falshood of a book called The Catholick naked truth, or, The Puritan convert to apostolical Christianity, written by W.H. opening their fundamental errour of unwritten tradition, and their unjust description of the Puritans, the prelatical Protestant, and the papist, and their differences, and better acquainting the ignorant of the same difference, especially what a Puritan and what a papist is / by Richard Baxter ...	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1677 (1677)	Wing B1315; ESTC R13884	120,987	206

Princes and Magistrates to keep peace and order among them all Governing Glergie-men as they do Philosophers Physicians c. But yours hath an Utopian pretended Government of men on the other side the world whose Countries you scarce ever heard or dreamed of and an Usurpation of an impossible confounding kind and degree of Rule XII Our Religion is fitted to give Glory to Christ and his Grace and Kingdom But yours to set up Proud Usurpers over Princes and People in such an impossible Government making Subjection to him necessary to salvation As if a man unacquainted with Cosmography that never heard that there was such a Town as Rome in the world must be no Christian and be damned when yet the Popes name was never mentioned in our Baptism XIII Our Religion is Faith working by Love Christs Ministers that are truly of our Religion take only convincing evidence of Truth and unfeigned love and works of love to be their means of winning Souls And they take not Christs Discipline which worketh only on the conscience to be a leaden Sword or vain But yours is a hanging killing Religion Jails Strappado's Exterminating and Burning men are your means and works of love You take a Bonfire or the Ashes of the Bodies of such as will not believe in the Pope to be a great Medicine to save the peoples Souls Such Murders as were done on the Albigenses Waldenses in the Inquisitions the French and Irish Massacres Smithfield Flames Piedmont c. are your proof that you love God and Man and some of your good works XIV Our Religion tendeth to holy consolation and a heavenly mind and life For it teacheth us how to be certain of Gods love by its effects on our Souls and to know that we are justified by Christ and to trust the sufficiency of his Sacrifice Merits and Intercession and to believe that when we are absent from the body we shall be present with the Lord 2 Cor. 5. 1. 7 8. and to desire to depart and be with Christ Phil. 1. 23. But yours leaveth a man uncertain of his Justification For you mostly deride such distinguished Fundamentals as received essentiate a justified Christian And your Doctors lay all mens necessary Religion and so their Peace upon their receipt of so much truth as hath been authentically proposed to them whereas no man living is certain that he hath received so much as hath been so proposed All men are guilty of neglecting some such Proposal at one time or other And gradual neglects the best are guilty of And you cannot ascertain men what is an authentick Proposal You also tell men of the necessity of their own satisfactions for the sin that Christ forgiveth and that in the Fire of Purgatory so that as is said before none such can dye comfortably that look to go hence into such a Fire where torment may make it hard to you to love God that tormenteth you It is a spirit of bondage that seemeth to actuate your very austerities and to turn your Religion into superstitious tasks of self-made Services Ceremonies and expectations of the expiating Flames in Purgatory But you shew too little of the Spirit of adoption of power love and a sound mind 2 Tim. 1. 7. of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost Rom. 14. Terrour and Torments are temptations to you to desire the miserablest life on Earth much more a life of pleasure rather than to dye when such Flames must next follow XV. We offer God such Worship as we can prove by his Word that he commandeth and accepteth and such reasonable service in spirit and truth which is not unsuitable to the Father of Spirits and God of wisdom yet using all reverent and decent behaviour of the body as well as of the mind But it would be hard to number over all the Humane inventions of Formalities and Rites and Ceremonies and Images and other arbitrary external things by which you have corrupted the Worship of God and hid the body in your new fashioned Cloathing which you pretended to adorn And as worldly minds do cumber themselves as Martha with many unnecessary things and then say Is it not lawful to do this and that while they hereby alienate the thoughts affections and time which should be laid out on the one thing needful so do you in Gods Worship make such abundance of work with your Ceremonies for thoughts affections and time as maketh it very difficult to give the great and spiritual part of Worship its proportion far beyond what Augustine Epist ad Januar. so much complained of in his time and then think you justifie all if you can say How prove you this or that unlawful As if your Servant should instead of his work play at Cards most of the day and ask you How you prove it unlawful You never well studyed 2 Cor. 11. 3. I 〈◊〉 lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ nor Col. 2. 18 19 20. 22 23. nor Act. 15. 28. nor Rom. 14 and 15. nor Ioh. 4. 20 21. An ignorant Woman set upon Christ just as you pervert all holy discourse with turning all to Which is the true Church Our Fathers Worshipped in this Mountain and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men should Worship But Christ answereth you in her The true Worshippers shall Worship the Father in spirit and in truth For the Father seeketh such to worship him God is a Spirit c. Those that by Custom be not ingaged in your way of numerous Formalities and bodily actions can hardly think that you are spiritually and seriously worshipping God or can believe that Infinite Wisdom would be pleased with such things as I am loth to denominate or describe XVI Our Religion teacheth us that without Holiness none shall see God and none but the Pure in Heart and Life are blessed and if any man have not the sanctifying spirit of Christ he is none of his and that God must be loved above all and our treasure heart and conversation must be in Heaven and none but Saints are saved I think you deny none of this And yet you Canonize a Saint as if he were a wonder or rarity and you call a few sequestred Votaries Religious as if all that will be saved must not be religious And your Doctors are permitted to teach all that 's cited in the Jesuites Morals and Mr. Clarkson fore-cited Even that it is not commanded that God be intensively loved above all Tolet. li. 4. de Instruct Sacerdot c. 9. see our Morton Apolog part 1. l. 2. c. 13. Stapleton l. 6. de Justif c. 10. Valent l. de Votis c. 3. This Precept of loving God with all the mind is doctrinal not obligatory see my Key chap. 33 34. 38. And yet you have the Fronts to perswade men that we are for only Imputative Holiness and against good works

Difference Verily our Differences here in England and the Neighbour Protestant Churches have shewed in us much personal peevishness unskilfulness and other faults but in my judgment they are such as greatly commend our real concord in the same Religion and partly our Conscience in valuing it and being loth to lose it If you see Latine Grammarians reviling one another about the spelling or pronunciation of a word or two and critically contending with Varro Gellius c. which is the right when a man that never knew a word of Latine but Welch or Irish never strove about such Questions in his life which of these will you think have more agreement in their Language I would say that those men that disagree but about the pronunciation of a few words are very much agreed in comparison of a Barbarian that agreeth not with them in a Sentence or a Word Even the old Schoolmen were in Language more agreed with Erasmus Faber Hutten and other Critical Grammarians that derided them than any illiterate man was with any of them All Gruterus his Volumes of Grammatical Controversies shew not so much distance in Language as the peaceable silence of an unlearned man doth And no one strives much about that which he doth not much care for Countrymen can contemptuously laugh at Logical Disputes or Criticisms Horses or Oxen will not strive with us for our Gold or Jewels Clothes or Food as we do with one another and yet they are not so like us in the estimation of such things as we are to one another When I hear religious persons contentiously censuring each other about some little points of Ceremony Order Discipline or Form which are but the fimbria or the Welts and Laces of Religion I am angry at their weakness and defect of love but I must needs think that there is very great concord in the Faith and Religion Objective of these men who differ about no greater matters than such as these If men that were building a Palace would fall together by the Ears only about the driving of a Pin I should marvel at their concord that differed in no more though I could wish them like wrangling Children whipt for their folly and frowardness till they were quiet The great things that Protestants have paltrily wrangled about are 1. The Doctrinal Controversies called Arminian 2. And the matters of Discipline and Ceremonies The former I have shewed lately in a large Volume hath much more of verbal than of real difference and is cherished by the ambiguity of words and the unskilfulness of too many to discuss those ambiguities and find out exactly the true state of the Controversie It is oft but Stubble that maketh the greatest blaze And as for the other I would not undervalue the least things of Religion but I will say that Engagement Faction and worldly Interest are magnifying Glasses to many men and make a Mote to seem a Beam and a Gnat to seem a Camel And it is one of the Devils old Wiles to keep men from learning of Christ how to Worship the Father of Spirits in spirit and truth by starting such Questions as whether in this Mountain or at Jerusalem men ought to worship and to hinder godly edifying by doting about questions that gender strife And fighting for Shoo-buckles may shew the quarrelsomness of men but it proveth not the Greatness of the matter 2. Note further that though Subjective Religion the measures of our belief Love and Obedience be as various as persons are yet the Objective Religion of all true Protestants is the same Not only the same in the Essentials one God one Saviour and Lord one Baptismal Covenant one Creed one Spirit one Body of Christ and one Hope of Glory Eph. 4. 4 5 6. but also the same in all the Integral parts For it is Integrally the Holy Scripture which containeth all that they take with the Law of Nature to be the whole Law of God and so the Rule of Divine Faith Desire and Duty They may subjectively have some difference in understanding some Texts as the most Learned and holy in the world have But Objectively they have no other Divine Faith or Religion 3. And note that the Church that Protestants yea Greeks Armenians Syrians Abassines are of are all certainly one and the same Church For a Church is constituted of the Ruling and the Ruled Parts And they perfectly agree that Christ is the only Essentiating and Universal Head In him they all unite and confess that there is no other Even the Patriarch of Constantinople as I have shewed claimeth but a Primacie in the Empire and not the Government of all the World no not of us in England And as for the Ruled Constitutive part we are agreed that it is All Baptized Christians that have not apostatized nor forsaken any Essential part of Christianity nor are excommunicate by Power from Christ So that we are clearly all of one and the same Church But how far the Papists differ in the Greatness and number of their Controversies I think to tell you a little more anon IV. I may not stay to shew at large how they vary their shape and course as may fit their Interest How sometime they put on the person of Infidels or Atheists to plead men into an uncertainty of all Religion that they may be loose enough to follow them into theirs For even so Car. Boverius would have perswaded our late King Apparat. ad Consult The first thing is saith he seeing true Religion is to be inquired after by you that before you address your self to search for it you first have all Religions in suspicion with you and that you will so long suspend or take off your mind and will from the Faith and Religion of the Protestants as you are in searching after the truth Reader doth not this tell you whence much of our late Atheism and Infidelity cometh and what it tendeth to I tell thee not the words of a Novice but a person chosen to have seduced our King when he was Prince in Spain And is not this way very suitable to the end How must men become Papists Boverius will teach you First suspect all Religion and with your very Mind and will cease to believe that there is a God or that he is Powerfull Wise or Good or that we are his Creatures and Subjects or that there is any Heaven or Hell or Life to come or that Christ is not a Deceiver but a Saviour or that any of the Bible is true Cease from Loving Fearing Obeying or trusting God and from loving man for his sake Cease praying to him and forbearing any wickedness injustice cruetly perjury or filthiness as being forbidden by him and this as long as you are searching after the truth Verily this devilish counsel is so notoriously followed now by some that we may fear what truth it is that they are searching after Certainly this way is of the Devil and how it can lead

you deny them this and make them to be as out of the true Church and state of Life If yea Q. 2. Did all that the Apostles Baptized believe all the Apocrypha and all the Decrees of your Councils and your Oral Traditions Q. 3. Did the ancient Fathers and Catechists teach all those to the Catechumens before they Baptized them Q. 4. And were not those all Christians and in the true Church and in a state of Life whom the Apostles Baptized without the profession of any such Belief Q. 5. What was the Creed the Symbolum fidei used for if not to distinguish the Faith of the Christian Church from Infidelity Heresie and all without And if all the Decrees of Councils be as necessary to be the Symbol of Faith why were they not all made up into a Creed and why is the Creed differenced from them all to this day And why do you not cause the Baptized to recite and profess all these Councils Decrees but only the old Christian Creed Q. 6. Doth not Christ at the Institution of his Sacrament Mat. 28. expresly promise that he that believeth according to Baptism in the Father Son and Holy Ghost shall be saved Q. 7. Is it not a reproach to God and the Christian Religion to tell the World that God hath written us by his Spirit so great a Book as the Bible is and yet there is not in it enough to Salvation but that abundance unnecessary to Salvation is in it and some necessary things left out Q. 8. Have your Oral superadded Traditions more Evidence of Truth than the Bible or more Evidence of Necessity to be believed Not more Evidence of Truth For you confess the certain Truth of all the Bible and that as fully manifest as your Additions If it have more Evidence of Necessity what is it It is not because it is a Divine Revelation For so you confess all the Bible to be And do you pretend to a Tradition that saith You may be saved without most of the Bible though it be of God but not without fasting on Frydays or on the Vigils of Saints-days or other such Traditions But if you will make both the whole Bible and Tradition necessary to be believed it must be either Explicitely or as you call it Implicitely If Explicitely that is as each Point is particularly understood and believed then it 's doubtful whether there be one Man in the World that is a Christian and can be saved If Implicitely that is Virtually as it is in some General Proposition what is that General Is it that All that God revealeth is true Or that All that the Spirit of Christ in his Apostles delivered to the Church as his word is true These we all agree in if this will serve the turn Is it that the Church is the Ministerial Keeper of the Sacred Doctrine as delivered This also we agree in Or is it that the Church de eventu shall never corrupt alter or lose this word or any part of it If you mean it of every particular Church we are agreed of the contrary You confess that many Churches have fallen to Heresie and many Apostatized from the Faith If you speak of the Universal Church we are agreed that the Universal Church shall never Apostatize for if Christ had no Church he were no Head of it And we are agreed that they shall never turn such true Hereticks as hold not truly all the Essentials of Christianity For such also are no Christians because each Essential part is necessary to the Essence But whether the Universal Church much more the Greater part may not make or receive some culpable alteration by Amission Omission or Commission we have reason to question We never heard any Proof that the Negative was necessary to Salvation nor is it held by all your selves and whether by any one man I cannot tell For you take the Bible to be Gods Word and your knowledge of the various Readings of the Hebrew and Greek Copies and the multitude of Errours in the Vulgar Latine corrected by P. Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. do satisfie all the World that you hold that the Universal Church or the major part even your own may culpably erre or alter the very written Word of God And who would then believe you if you said But the Unwritten Word it cannot alter It 's true indeed the Essentials considered as Written or Unwritten all the true Church nor any one Christian while such cannot deny But sure if many thousand Errours may be found in that Book which you take your selves for the Word of God and this through the fault or failing of such as have had the keeping of it and all Divine Revelations are to be believed and all the Word of God is Divine Revelation it notoriously followeth That your own Church hath not kept all that is matter of Divine Faith from alteration So that though many of your Wranglers will not distinguish the Essentials of Christianity called Fundamentals from the Integrals and Accidentals as if Christianity were nothing and had no determinate Essence yet this sheweth that you must do it whether you will or not or else you must confess that your Church may alter any thing or every thing as it hath done all these fore-mentioned Which we will not confess of the Church Universal But I suppose that we have not yet met with the Faith that you account necessary to salvation It is that the Pope of Rome and a General Council cannot erre in delivering to us the Apostolical Doctrine to be believed And this is an implicite believing of all that is written in Scripture and that is delivered orally from the Apostles If so words and names go very far with you as to mens salvation Is this to believe a thousand things which a man never knew or heard of if he do but believe the Infallibility of your Church What! Believe that which I never once thought of But this is but Implicite Faith A cheating Name for No-belief of those things For by Implicite here you can mean only Virtual and that is no Actual Belief of that thing at all but of something else which would infer more were it known Nay Virtual is too high a Name for it But will this serve the turn to salvation to believe that the Pope and his Council are Infallible What! though the same Person believe not in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost nor any of the Articles of his Creed no not a Life to come If you say Yea Then will you call this Christianity to believe in the Pope and not in Christ Or do you mean that men may be saved without Christianity but not without Popery If so why was not the Popes Name rather than Christs put into Baptism and the Creed or at least with Christs But the insuperable difficulty is How must I believe that the Pope hath this Infallibility From Christ or otherwise If not from Christ tell me

Massacres as were in France of Thirty Thousand or Forty Thousand or in Ireland of Two Hundred Thousand hath made them think your Power inconsistent with their safety 3. And you must remember that the Positive Additions of the Church of Rome are in the Judgment of the Puritans very great sins But you have truly no charge against the Puritans for any one Article of their Religion but only for not receiving and for protesting against your Additions 4. But I perceive p. 5. your Instances of their defectiveness are that they are not for fasting days particular Garments for Priests set Forms Christmas-day Good-Friday Ascension Whitsuntide c. which they take for meer Humane inventions and Will-worship Because they think that the New Testament was written to instruct us Christians in the whold Body of Gospel-worship c. But you are best prove this only by telling us that you know some persons of that mind And when you have done I will demand your Proof that those Persons are no more than Puritans They have oft told you that their judgment is that for all that substance of God's Worship which is of Universal necessity to the Church and is of Divine Institution the holy Scripture is a sufficient Rule But that very many Circumstances and outward Acts have in Scripture but a General Law that they be all done to edification decently orderly in Concord c. and it is left to Humane Prudence to order them by such Rules We condemn no one that useth holy Fasts or Feasts but think them needful We judge not those that celebrate the Memorial of God's great Mercies to his Church by giving him thanks for the holy Life and Doctrine of his Eminent Saints c. But will you plainly have our judgment We think Saint Paul was in the right that taught the Church of Rome it self both the Rulers and the Flocks that they must neither judge nor despise each other for differences about Meats and Days but receive each other to Communion notwithstanding such differences as Christ received us Rom. 14. and 15. And we will not believe your Grand-Father nor Great-Grand-Father if they told us that the Apostles by Tradition did institute Holy-days and Vigils for St. Tecla or St. Bridgit or St. Thomas Becket or any that were not born till they were dead And any one Day or Order which you truly prove to us that the Apostles by Tradition ordained for the Universal Church we profess our selves ready and resolved to obey But if you plead not Tradition for any of these things but the Churches Commands as you must do or be singular or ashamed here you come to the quick of our difference 1. We know not of any Universal Vicarious Law-giver under Christ that hath any power to make Laws to the Universal Church throughout the World and we dare not own any such Usurper lest we be guilty of Treason against the only Head of the whole Church 2. We know not of any power that the chief Bishop in the Roman Empire hath over other Empires Kingdomes or Churches 3. But to our own true Pastors which are set over us according to Christ's order and his Apostles recorded in Scripture we Puritanes will submit in all such Circumstantials as aforesaid which are left to their prudent determination not putting us on any sin But 4. We detest making such things as you here name to be taken for the Characters of distinct Religions or distinct Churches as if we might not with Love Peace and Christian Communion differ about a Garment a Holy-day Fast or Vigil Thus far then you seem not to know what a meer Puritan is II. But Sir I have much more than all these little things against your Description of a Puritane I plainly perceive in your greatest praises of him that you know not what his very Religion it self is or else you would never describe him as only taken up with fears and cares and good desires to be better having yet greedy desires of the things of the World without any mention of the Love of God above all and of his Neighbour and a holy and heavenly Mind and Life with self-denyal mortification of the Flesh c. Either you judge of a Puritane by what you were your self or by what your acquaintance were or by what they commonly profess to be their Religion For the first you have no reason It followeth not that they have no better a Religion because you had no better For the second you had no reason For it 's ten to one you knew not the hearts of your acquaintance so well as to be able to know that they had not the Love of God c. And if you were so unhappy in your acquaintance what 's that to other Men Thirdly Therefore as you look that your own Religion should be described not as we find it in this or that man but as your Church professeth it so do we And I have told you before what our Religion is I have the more boldness in speaking the sense of others as I said both because I am as aforesaid stigmatized for a total Puritan and because the generality of all of them of my acquaintance as far as I can discern are of this mind A Puritan then as the Word is commonly taken by the Rabble is a serious Christian Protestant who truly believeth and practiseth what he doth profess and doth not mortifie that Profession which should help to mortifie his Sin His Religion is to be understandingly and sincerely devoted in the Sacramental Covenant to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Vanities of the World the Lusts of the Flesh and the Delusions of the Devil He believeth that all that truly consent to this Covenant have a right and part in and to the Love of God the Father the Grace of the Son and the Communion of the Holy Chost and that he that hath the Son hath Life Pardon Adoption Justification and Right to Life Eternal and that this Right is continued he performing his Covenant and continuing in that Faith which worketh by Love and not living impenitently in sin but sincerely obeying God his Father Saviour and Sanctifier He taketh the fear of Gods Justi●● ●nd godly Sorrow to be but the lower steps of Holiness but that the Kingdom of God is not Meats and Days but Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost and that the Spirit of Christ without which none are his is not the Spirit of Bondage but of Power Love and a sound Mind even a Spirit of holy LIFE LIGHT and LOVE which are the Essentials of true Holiness and the Spirit of Adoption and Supplication causeth us with Love to cry to God and trust him as a Father They take Christ to be the only Mediator between God and Man whose sufficient Sacrifice for Sin and perfect Righteousness Habitual Active and Passive as called advanced in dignity by the Divine Nature is the Meritorious cause of