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	worshipper_n	5,370	5	12.3554	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A55301	Armatura Dei, or, A preparation for suffering in an evil day shewing how Christians are to bear sufferings, and what graces are requisite thereunto : suited for all good Christians in this present time / by Edward Polhil ..., Esq.	Polhill, Edward, 1622-1694?	1682 (1682)	Wing P2750; ESTC R3431	68,313	156

cent 4. cap. 12. Valeat vita valeant meae facultates Farewel life farewel Estate Take heed that thy poor soul do not hang about Houses and Lands when thou art called forth to suffer for Christ and the pure Religion Further if thou wilt not part with thy worldly honour for Christ thou wilt never fuffer for him An ambitious man will do any thing for advancement he will bow to an Idol that himself may be honoured he lives upon a blast a little popular air and is too vain and light to suffer for Religion cast away therefore the love of Mundane Glory that thou maiest bear the reproach of Christ humble thy self before God that thou maiest be able to suffer for his Truth Count it an honour to suffer shame for Christ be willing to be reproached for him who can give thee the Spirit of glory 3. Mortify the Hypocrisy that is in thy bosom This sin is the art of seeming goodness or vice in a Vizor It is by this that men personate more grace than they have and enlarge their forms of Godliness beyond the power and make a profession much greater than is ever filled up It is from the remnants of this in good men that they sometimes take false steps and Squint at By-ends and start aside from God like a deceitful Bow It is from hence that the Saints now and then faint in their Faith cool in their Love and halt and make stops in their Obedience Watch therefore O Christian against this close evil consider the vileness of it think with thy self how greivous a thing it is to be false to that God who makes all other things true to thee the Sun to give thee true light and the creatures true nourishment the blood to run right in thy veines and the breath in thy nostrils loath and abhorr this abominable thing cry to heaven for more truth in thy inward parts labour to have the very power of Religion that thou maiest fill up thy profession mourn over thy Falls and withering Graces check thy starting heart and charg it to maintain a firm and close adherence to God set thy self all manner of waies to root out and extirpate the remnants of hypocrisy out of thy heart that when thou comest to suffer for Religion thy Heart may not decieve thee Truth in the Heart is necessary in hearing praying repenting believing obeying but above all it is so in suffering for Christ hypocrisy can personate all other graces but usually it stumbles and discovers itself in a day of trial therefore mortify the secret guil that is in thy heart that thou maiest stand fast under the cross 4. Mortify the vain superstition that is in the heart It is natural to us to desire the same thing as the children of Israel did to have Gods to go before us to have visible images or pictures of the deity a pompous and stately worship a gaudy Religion made up of humane additions and inventions and such a way of serving God as is accommodated to sense and framed after the commandments of men every one is ready to think in his false heart what Ticonius said with his lips Aug. Contr. Ep. Parmen Lib. 2. cap. 13. Quod volumus Sanctum est that which we will is holy That which in the worship of God is fine and decent in our eyes is so in Gods too But consider with thy self he that places his Religion in such things as these may chance to fall in Love with that fine Whore which is decked with gold and pretious stones Revel 17.4 He that will have a Religion sutable to Sense will hardly stand to that Religion which hath a Cross annexed to it If the Command of man be the reason of thy Worship thou wilt turn to every Point as that Command doth vary If thou canst nod in Superstition thou hadst need watch lest thou fall into flat Idolatry Remember God is a Spirit the true Worshippers worship in Spirit and truth and the true Worshippers will prove the true sufferers Stand to the pure Worship thou maiest not fall into a corrupt one Worship God in Spirit that thou maiest never fall down to an Idol CHAP. VI. The third Direction for Suffering is the Knowledg of God An ignorant man is not capable of suffering neither will every knowledge serve the turn The Knowledge that prepares for Suffering must be a well-rooted a right estimating a tasting or savouring a practical or operative Knowledge THe third Direction for suffering is this if we would be in a fit posture for suffering we must labour after the knowledge of God and the things of God An ignotant man who is a man in shape but a beast in heart is not a person capable of pious Suffering He knows not the Principles of Religion and for what should he suffer He hath no Principles of Grace in him and how should he suffer He is in darkness and to him Truth or Error one God or more pure Worship or Idolatry are all one he is alienated from the life of God Eph. 4.18 and therefore it is not imaginable that he should dye for God or his Truth For him to suffer for an unknown God or Christ is to suffer for he knows not what As the Samaritans worshipped they knew not what so the ignorant man if he suffer suffers for he knows not what The Athenians had an Altar to the unknown God Acts. 17.23 and possibly they offered up other Creatures to him But for a man to offer up himself as a Sacrifice to an unknown God and to part with all this World when he knows nothing of a better is a very strang unaccountable thing Let us therefore cry after Wisdom and lift up our voice for Understanding Let us seek her as silver and search for her as for hid Treasures as the Wiseman exhorts Prov. 2.3 4. Let our Prayers ascend up to Heaven to bring her down from thence and our Endeavors dig in the Mines of Scripture to fetch her up from thence that so Vnderstanding may keep us as it is Verse 11. Knowledge is a preservative to him that hath it the People that know their God shall be strong Dan. 11.32 The young men who have the word of God abiding in them are strong 1 Joh. 2.14 Vnderstanding is a well-spring of life to him that hath it Prov. 16.22 It streams out in living Graces and strengthens the Inner-man and prepares it for a day of trial only it is to be remembred that every knowledge will not do this but it must be a well-rooted a right estimating a tasting or savouring a practical or operative Knowledge that doth it 1. It must be a well-rooted Knowledge that will prepare us for suffering Job tels his Friends That the root of the matter or as the original will bear the root of the wood was in him Job 19.28 He was sorely afflicted by God and men yet he held fast his integrity because he was not

a man of meer Leaves but had a root of Knowledge and Grace in him It is with Christians as it is with Trees the more the Tree is rooted in the ground the faster it stands in a storm the more a Christian is rooted in Evangelical Truths the firmer he stands in a time of Persecution Those of the stony ground received the word with joy but fell off in time of perpersecution because they had no root in them selves Math. 13.21 The Heavenly Truth did but lye upon the face of their Hearts and never sunk into them to become a virtual Principle in them The Truth that we would suffer for had not need be a loose Notion but Truth in the hidden parts fastned there as a nail in a sure place sealed up to the heart by the holy spirit ingrafted and innaturalized in the mind that we may not let it go We had need be grounded and setled in the faith as the Apostle speaks Col. 1.23 Grounded as an house upon a sure Foundation and setled as a man sitting fast in a Chair We had need have a good Scripture bottom and be firmly seated in the Truth that we may be capable of suffering for Religion The Scripture tels us that there is but one God one only to be worshipped and served that his glory may not be given to another nor his praise to graven Images that Idols are silver and gold the work of mens hands that they have mouths and speak not eyes and see not ears and hear not noses and smell not hands and handle not feet and walk not that the Makers and Worshippers of them are like unto them as stupid as the senseless Images are that an Idol is nothing a thing of no moment or power at all a meer nothing to be it self made a God or so much as to represent one If such truths as these of which St. Cyprian hath given a great Catalogue in his Exhortation to Martyrdome be intimately radicated in the heart they will strengthen it against Idolatry Magd. Hist Cent. 4. cap. 12. The glorious Martyr Eulalia seemed to be full of them when in her great sufferings she sung that Isis Apollo Venus were nothing and Maximianus the worshipper of them was himself nothing O let us adhere to the holy Truths in the Word these came down from Heaven and like their Original are nothing but pure Truth without any mixture of Error in them these appear to us in the light of the first Truth and lead to the bliss-making Vision of him in Heaven and as we desire to be there let us firmly adhere to them especially to the word of Christs Patience The Truth that must be suffered for at such at time as this to that we must cleave closest because in that will be the greatest stress and trial It is good to be established in all Truth but now it is in a special manner necessary to be well fixed in the Truth that concerns the Pure Religion which runs very low in the Christian World while in the mean while the Idolatrous one is like to be triumphant 2. It must be a right estimating Knowledge that will prepare us for suffering Every Notion of the things of God will not do it he that hath an high notion of them but a low estimation hath but a knowledge falsly so called he knows them not as he ought to know them because he knows them only to know them but not to value them We must so know them as to rate them above a World this is of great moment in order to Suffering A man is capable to suffer or not according as his estimate of Spiritual things is higher or lower When the Martyr Polycarp was urged by the Proconsul to deny Christ Eustb Lio. 4. cap. 15. his answer was A potioribus non esse transeundum ad pejora we must not pass from better things to worse He esteemed Christ better then the World and therefore he suffered for him But if he had esteemed the World better then Christ he had never been a Martyr As the estimation is so is the man We know the Evangelical Truth but if we do not rate it higher then all the World we shall never be able to suffer for it It is indeed in itself a glorious Beam let down from Heaven a pure discovery of the great Salvation that is in Jesus Christ and in that respect incomparably more worth then all the World but if we do not so account it we shall fall from it to embrace the World as being better in our eyes It is very remarkable that when the Emperors Presect allured the great Basil to the Arrian Doctrine Tneod b. 4. cap. 19. as being but a small thing the holy man answered That he would not part with one syllable of Scripture no not to save his life Such an esteem of Truth is of excellent use to make a man adhere to it in an evil day We know the pure worship but if we do not prize it above all earthly things we shall never be able to suffer for it It is in itself a thing exceeding pretious it is the choicest part of life that is spent in it the honor of God is more immediately concerned in it then in other things That noble Convert Galeacius Caracciolus who left all for Christ prized one days Communion with Christ more than all the Gold or Silver in the World And if we can rate it so we shall never turn aside from it to the Idolatrous World nor be carried into sin by the stream of the Time Or say as one going to Mass did Eamus ad communem errorem let us go to the Common Error We know the Glory of Christ is to be promoted but if we do not value it above our own Reputation we shall never suffer reproach for him Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches then the treasures of Egypt Hebx 11.26 Reproach in itself is a vile thing no way estimable but the reproach of Christ hath an honor in it and outshines all the glories of the World Marsacus a French Souldier being adjudged with others to the Fire and for his Military service not having as others had Thuan Lib. 12. An. 1553. a With put about his neck demands the reason why he might not be permitted to wear such a Chain as his Fellows did and to be made of the same illustrious order as they were of If we have such a Divine Spirit as this is in us we shall count in an high honor to suffer reproach for Christ A right estimation of things is an excellent help to bear sufferings for Religion 3. It must be a tasting or Savouring Knowledge that will prepare us for suffering Treat of Faith cap. 9. It is the taste of God's Word saith Dr. lackson that sweetens sufferings to us and makes us couragious to adventure upon all difficulties that are objected to deter as from entring into the

beaten tortured burned torn killed and yet they were multiplied Julian the Apostate learned this from persecution under Diocletian and upon that account he abstained for a time from exercising Torments and bloody Cruelties upon Christians Magd. cent 4. cap. 3. because he saw that the Christians by patient Suffering were multiplied and became more glorious in the eyes of the People Antichrist hath shed a great deal of pretious blood and the witnesses of the pure Religion have been slain under him yet hath the Evangelical Truth remained and the Witnessess which were Slain have from time to time revived and stood up in illustrious Successors who have held forth the same Truth and spoke in the same Spirit and Power as those before them had done When after the Parisian Massacre there happened to be a great serenity in Heaven Thuan Lib. 52. and a Barbery-tree blossoming in a time unusal some Papists said That the thing was grateful to God as if Heaven and Earth had rejoiced at it But the Protestants took it as a sign that the Church should revive and flourish again like the bush that burned and was not consumed The true Church which is founded in Christs blood is not propagated or multiplied by Martial Arms but by patient Sufferings This is the true way to do good to the Church and to continue the Gospel among us if we are indeed in a posture for suffering and ready to Seal up the Truth with our Blood we may comfortly hope that whatever Sufferings come the Gospel and gratious Presence of God shall not finally depart from our Nation 3. Pious Sufferers do give an evident token to the Persecutor that the wrath of God will come upon him When the Emperor Commodus was worshipping Jupiter Vincentius Eusebius Peregrinus Magd. hist cent 2. cap. 12. and Potentianus went about and exhorted the People to depart from the Worship of Devils and honour the One only true God lest they perished with Commodus and soon after they suffered Martyrdome for the same thing Though all the Martyrs did not in words warn the Persecutors that the Wrath of God would come upon them yet they all by their patient Suffering gave them an evident token of it St. Paul exhorts the Philippians to patient suffering upon this account Stand fast saith he in one Spirit with one mind striving together for the Faith of the Gospel and in nothing terrified by your adversaries which is to them an evident token of Perdition but to you of Salvation and that of God Phil. 1.27 28. The Persecutor comes with his Torments and Engines of Cruelty to terrify the Martyr but the Martyr by his Christian Patience and Courage gives the Persecutor and evident token that the wrath of God will come down upon him at last If bloody Persecutors who look upon the suffering Martyrs had but their Eyes open they would see cause enough to reflect upon themselves and say Surely these men have a patience more than humane and therefore they suffer for God and if so we in persecuting them fight against him may expect that his wrath should come down upon us as it hath upon former Persecutors Herod Agrippa was eaten up of Worms Nero with a trembling hand cut his own throat Trajan was thought to have poisoned himself upon the Persecution in the time of Antoninus Verus there followed Wars Earthquakes Inundations Pestilences as so many Tokens of Divine Vengeance Decius was slain together with his Children Dioclesian died of fearful and miserable Diseases Julian in the Persian war was mortally wounded by an Arrow from Heaven and threw up his blood thither with that horrible Blasphemy Vicisti Galilaee Valens in his war against the Gothes was wounded and flying into a Cottage was burnt with it by the Enemy The temporal Judgments that have befallen former Persecutors tell the after-ones what they may look for here in this World or if they might escape here eternal Vengeance will surely meet them hereafter Our Saviour Christ will at the great day bid those that did not feed cloth and Visit him in his Members depart into ever lasting fire Matth. 25.41 much more will he say so to those that Imprison torment and kill him in his Members When Henry the second of France in his running a Tilt received a fatal wound in his Eye he looked to the Prison Thuan. L. 22. where the poor Protestants were shut up as Captives for their Religion and often uttered these words That he was afraid that he had done the poor innocent men wrong Conscience then told him what it was to persecute Oh! That such things as these might stop Persecutors in their bloody ways as the Thunderbolt falling neer the Emperor Anrelianus did him in his intended Persecution of the Christians The patience of those that suffer under their cruel hands tell them that the wrath of God will fall upon them at Last I conclude with that of St. Cyprian Ad Demetrianum Quanto major persecutio tanto gravior pro persecutione vindicta The greater the Persecution is the heavier will be the Vengeance for it 4. Pious Sufferers are happy here and hereafter They are happy here upon a double account 1. They give the highest proof of their Sincerity that can be given Abraham gave a great proof of his Sincerity in leaving his Countrey and a greater in offering up his only Son Isaac at Gods command but I take it the Martyr gives a higher proof of it than is done in either of those it being more to part with all the World than to part with our Countrey and to offer up our selves to God than to offer up a Son The highest proof of Grace is in Suffering That Faith muh be right that endures the fiery Furnace that Love must be pure that practically lifts up God above all other things that Hope must be lively that lets go a present World for a future one that Obedience must be glorious that continues unto the death The Martyr hath a fair prospect with a comfortable sight of his own uprightness Conscience gives an Euge to his Graces and Sufferings nay the holy Spirit is as a seal and earnest of his Heavenly Inheritance It bears witness with his Spirit that he is a Son and Heir of God 2. As they give the highest proof of their Sincerity so they have the gracious Presence of God in the most eminent way with them All his glorious Attributes do as it were pitch their Tents round about them and put forth their Virtues in a gracious manner for their good His Power rests upon them to bear them up how weak soever in the fiery Trial his Wisdom directs them how to carry the selves under the Cross his Mercy melts over them while they are under mans Cruelty his Love is shed abroad in their heart while they bear the World hatred The Presence of God will be to them in stead of nay infinitely more than all other Comforts They may say If God be for us who can be against us Rom. 8.31 Why Devils can wicked men can but Aquinas expounds the words Quis contra nos laesive prevalenter Who can be against us to hurt us and prevail over us That which is of God cannot be overthrown they may break out with St. Paul in that gallant triumph 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am perswaded that neither death nor life nor Angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor hight nor depth nor any other Creature shall be able to separare us from the Love of God in Christ Rom. 8.38 39. What St. Bernard saith of the Church is true of them a noble part of it In Cant. ser 79. Nec Verbositate Philosophorum nec Cavillationibus Haereticorum nec Gladiis Persecutorum potuit illa Separari à Charitate Dei quae est in Christo They cannot be separated from the Love of God in Christ neither by the words of Philosophers nor by the Cavils of Hereticks nor yet by the Swords of Persecutors God is in the midst of them and they shall not be moved Again They are happy hereafter this stands in two things 1. They are freed from all evils In Heaven they shall have no Corruption within nor Oppression without no Noise of Passion in the heart nor rout of turbulent Persecutors to disquiet them the will of the Flesh shall have a total Circumcision the infirmities of the Body shall have a perfect cure the Serpent cannot hiss in Paradise no temptations or miseries can fasten on a Saint in Glory There is Day without Night Love without Fear Joy without sorrow Life without Death all Happiness without the least mixture of Evil There the blessed Martyrs shall be freed from all their troubles and miseries 2. They are endowed with all good and happiness The promises made to the Overcomer in the Revelation of St. John shall be made good to them they shall eat of the Tree of Life in a blessed immortality they shall have the white stone in a perfect absolution they shall be clothed in Robes of Glory they shall be Pillars in the heavenly Temple standing there as ornaments in an immoveable Felicity they shall sit down with Christ in his throne and judge their Enemies that condemned them they shall inherit all things they that lost all for God shall enherit all in him who is goodness itself and the fountain of it They shall see him who is the original and Christal ocean of all truth they shall enjoy him who is the supream good and sabbath of souls they shall be swallowed up in the joy of infinite truth and goodness and their happiness shall not be for a time but run parallel with eternity itself they shall be for ever in the Lord in the blessed Region De Civit. Dei Lib. 22. cap. 30. There as St. Austin hath it God who is all in all Sine fine Videbitur since fastidio amabitur sine fatigatione laudabitur shall be seen without end loved without disdain and praised without weariness In the next World there will be a vast difference between Persecutors and Sufferers The Pride and Cruelty of the one will be paid for in Torments and endless Misery in the Prison of Hell and the Patience and Suffering of the other will be returned in Joys and eternal Felicity in the blessed Heaven FINIS