Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	truth_n	worship_n	worship_v	19,034	5	9.4594	4	true

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

substance and sense and most of the very words all Churches used the same And when the Council of Nice taught them the way of making new Creeds which Hilary Pictav so sadly complaineth of yet still the matter of the old Creed was the substance of them all And the Eastern Creed which was used before the Nicene Council for that such a one there was the most Learned Antiquaries give us sufficient proof was but the same in sense as the Western even the Exposition of the Baptismal Faith and this the Baptized did profess before Baptism And the work of Catechists was to teach this and the sense of it to the Catechumens And that He that believeth and is baptized that is truly devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost by the Baptismal Covenant shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned is by Christ himself made the sum of his Gospel or Law of Grace As the Image of the blessed Trinity on mans Soul is Life Light and Love so the summaries of that sacred Doctrine which must imprint it on us is the Symbolum Fidei the Creed the summary of things to be believed and the Lords Prayer the Symbolum and summary of things to be willed desired and sought and the Decalogue the summary of things to be practised being the Directory of Mans three Faculties the Intellect the will and the Executive Power And all this we believe was delivered to the Churches by the Apostles and received by all Christians many years eight at least before any Book of the New Testament was written And for the fuller understanding and improvement of it and for all the integral parts of Religion that were to be added the Apostles and Evangelists more enlargedly preached them to the People in their Sermons as Christ himself had done much of them We receive all that as Gods Word which by these Apostles was delivered as such to the Churches because they had the promise of the Holy Ghost to lead them into all truth and to bring all things that Christ taught and commanded to their remembrance We are assured that all that is contained in the New Testament was written by such inspired Persons and that the Spirit of God will knew that when they were to dye without written Records the memory of Mankind would not faithfully retain and deliver to Posterity such copious matter as the Integrals and useful Accidentals of Religion and therefore caused them to write it and leave it to Posterity So that our Christian Religion is contained and delivered to us in three Formulas or Prescripts The first containeth the whole Essence of Christianity and is the Sacramental Covenant in which we are believingly given up to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and God to us in the Relation of a God and Father a Saviour and a Sanctifier This is done initially ad esse in Baptism and after ad robur in the Lords Supper This is delivered to us by Tradition Naturally Infallible de facto For all Christians as such have received and entred this Sacramental Covenant and full History assureth us that the very same Form of it is come down in all the Churches to this day The second Formula is the Exposition of the three Articles of this Sacramental Covenant in the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue which hath been delivered by memory also and kept unchanged save the foresaid additions of some explicatory words in the Creed to all the Churches to this day The third Form is all the holy Canonical Scriptures the Old Testament being as preparatory to the New which contain all the Essentials Integrals and needful Accidentals Our Religion then is all from Christ and his Spirit in inspired men commissioned to deliver it and is well called as you do the Apostolical Christianity We own no other It is all brought down to us by Tradition from the Apostles The Essentials in the Covenant and the explicatory Symbols or Summaries are delivered to us two ways First by Memory and Practice most currant and certain from Generation to Generation being no more than what Memory might well retain whereto yet the helps of the Ancients Writings reciting the Forms were used for the fuller certainty of Posterity Secondly in the holy Scriptures where they are contained as the Brain Heart and Stomach in the Body among all the rest as the Principal Parts The third form is so large that Memory could not preserve it and therefore God would have it delivered us in that Writing which we all call the Sacred Bible or Canonical Scripture This containeth thousands of words more than are of absolute necessity to Salvation but no more than is useful or helpful to Salvation In all this I have shewed you what our Religion is Objectively taken and which way we receive it Where you are therefore to note 1. That all our Sermons Writings Church-Articles c. are but the Expressions of our Subjective Religion telling other Men how particular Men and particular Churches understand those Divine Forms which are our Objective Religion These are various as Churches and Persons are every one having his own Faith and Religion in different measures and such expressions being but our sides mensurata may be altered and amended and we pretend not to perfection in them But the former being our sides vel Religio mensurans our Divine Objective Faith or Religion is inculpable and unalterable 2. Note that you Papists do grant all our Objective Faith and Religion even every word of it to be true infallible and of God You own I say every word of our Religion That is all the Sacramental Covenant all the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue and all that which we call the holy Canonical Scriptures But we own not all yours So that you do not you cannot find fault with the least Particle of our Religion as to the truth of it but 1. You think that it is not enough And 2. That we come not to it the right way that is we take not our Faith upon the word of Papists as Papists Is not this the difference And is not this all that you cry out against us for And now let us see whether your way be better and surer than this of ours is I. Your Religion is much Bigger than ours II. You hold it on other Reasons and plead another way of receiving it I. Your Religion Objective containeth besides all our Bible all the Apocryphal Books and all the Decrees of General Councils and all the other un-written Traditions if there be any more who knows what you name your self here fasting on Frydays and on the vigils of Saints Ember-days Lent and Images and such like Here now we humbly propose to your consideration 1. Whether you will take all these into the Essentials of Christianity or not If not a Man may be a Christian and consequently of the Church or Body of Christ and in a state of Salvation without them Why then do

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

the Votes of all the Christian World 3. And have all that were converted in the Apostles days and since first known the Major Vote of the Christians or were they converted by the foreknown Infallibility or Authority of the Majority or of the Pope Some will say we see the Madness of this Popery but how then do you say that the faith must be received if not from the Church I answer I have told you at large in a Treatise called The Reasons of the Christian Religion and briefly in a smaller Treatise called The certainty of Christianity without Popery Briefly Judging is one thing and Teaching is another thing Before I submit to the Decision of a Judge I must know his Commission or Authority and I must then stand to his Sentence which way ever he decide the Case Men be not converted to Christianity by such Judges but by Teachers Nor will I believe the Judge if he say there is no Christ no Life to come c. But a Teacher is to make intelligible to his Hearer or Scholar the evidence of truth which is in the matter taught and to draw men to believe by telling them those true reasons upon which he did believe himself And no man takes him for his Teacher that he is perswaded knoweth no more than himself And the greater reputation of Knowledge and Honesty the Teacher hath the easier we apply our minds to learn of him and a humane trust or faith prepareth us to receive that evidence of truth which may beget a Divine Faith by the help of Grace But still the Learner truly believeth no more than he thus learneth And I may hear a stranger tell what he hath to say and be convinced by the evidence that he giveth me of the truth though I know not of any Authority that he hath to teach me much less judicially to decide the Case I little doubt but most that were converted by the Apostles themselves were perswaded to believe in Christ by the evidence of truth proposed the Spirit co-operating before they knew of any Authority of the Apostles much less before they heard what they said in a General Council or what was the Vote of the Universal Church or what any Pope said as Ruler of the rest These things are very plain and sure and they that will be wilfully blinded by faction and prejudice and worldly interest against plain truth have no excuse if they perish in darkness II. A PAPIST of this sort is one that believeth that the Pope of Rome is the rightful Governour of all the world that is that all Christians immediately and all Infidels and Heathens mediately are bound by God to obey him as Christs Vicegerent on Earth And that he with his Council is thus an Universal Lawgiver and Judge to all Kings States and Persons that dwell round about the Earth But a Protestant denyeth this and holdeth that there is no Universal Monarch or Legislator to all the world but God and our Saviour and that he hath made no such Vice-Christ or Vicegerent and that such a Claim is High-Treason as usurping his Prerogative And that if Pride had not in tantum made them mad no men could think themselves thus capable of Governing all the World Protestants believe that there is no such thing on Earth as an Universal Church headed by any mortal Head Pope or Council but that Christ is the only Universal Governour or Head III. This Papist is one that holdeth that the Church of Christ on Earth is no bigger than the Popes Dominion and that it is necessary to salvation to be subject to the Pope and consequently he unchurcheth two or three parts of the Christian world and damneth most of the Body of Christ and robbeth him of the greatest part of his Kingdom as far as denying his Right amounts to And consequently is a notorious Schismatick or Sectary appropriating the Church title only to his Sect. This is proved before from the Masters of their Religion IV. This Papist is one that holdeth that those Councils which were General as to one Empire were General as to all the Christian world And that such General Councils there must be if it please the Pope to call them though they must come from all the Quarters of the Earth and whence they have no Sea passage and out of the Empires of many Princes and many that are Enemies to the Christian Name and perhaps at Wars with Christians and when the Voyage or Journey is such that if the Churches be deprived of a thousand Bishops twenty of them are never like to live to return home to the remotest Nations Nor could they converse as a Council by reason of the number and diversity of Languages if they were equally gathered Or they hold that if a small part of the Christian World assemble as at Trent when the rest cannot come this is an Universal Council of and to all the Christian World V. This Papist is one that holdeth If a fallible Pope and a fallible General Council do but agree their Decrees are infallible As if an unlearned Pope e. g. that understands not the Text of Scripture in the Original and an unlearned Council as to the most should agree their Decrees would be learned e. g. in judging which is the true Translation of a Tongue which they never understood As if ten purblind men if they meet together might produce the Effects of the clearest sight or Fools by conjunction become wise VI. He holdeth that Tradition from Fathers to Children is the sure way of conveying all the matter of Faith and Religion and yet that the greatest General Councils which are the Church representative may erre in matter of Faith and have erred unless a Pope who is fallible approve of their Decrees VII And when he hath trusted to this way of Tradition he denyeth the Judgment and Tradition professed by the greater half or the Christian World VIII He believeth that all men are bound on pain of damnation to believe that the Senses and perception of all men in the World are deceived in apprehending that after Consecration there is true Bread and Wine in the Sacrament And he that will so believe his own and others Senses should suffer as an Heretick and be rooted out of all the Dominions of all Christian Lords on Earth So merciful is he to his Neighbours For an approved General Council hath decreed this and such Councils are his Religion Were it his own Father or Mother Wife or Child that cannot thus renounce all his own and other mens Senses and believe that there is no Bread or Wine in spight of his sight taste touch c. he believeth that they should be burnt as Hereticks or exterminated He may be a good naetur'd man that is loth it should be so or he may be one that is ignorant of his own Religion and doth not know that this is one Article of Popery or he may be an unconscionable man that