Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A49323
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Du Moulin's Reflections reverberated being a full answer to a pernicious pamphlet entituled Moral reflections on the number of the elect : together with several arguments against transubstantiation of the outward elements in the sacrament of the Lords Supper, transubstantiated into falshood and absurdity : to which is added a postscript in answer to some passages in Mr. Edmund Hickeringil's scurrilous piece stiled The second part of naked truth / by Edward Lone ...
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Lane, Edward, 1605-1685.
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1681
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Wing L331; ESTC R10768
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106,099
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120
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whom you have fancied to be culled out of your Thousands and Millions when it is clear the good Spirit of God speaks it expressy of Adam and his Ofspring as they generally Issue from him in their several Generations Are you then and your Complices sit to meddle with the Holy Scripture when you understand it no better Better surely were it for you if it were as a sealed Book unto you rather than be permitted to wrest it so perniciously to your own destruction There is a Truth I confess in what you here say But seeing you cannot but know that these words of the Apostle from whence you gather this your abundant Favor for one probably of your own gang are of so large an extent as hath been said and that to take them in his sense were utterly to overthrow your damnable Doctrine which rather than you would do you would pervert them to your own private shallow Interpretation since it is so may it not well be said without any offence either before God or Man you are fitter to be a Hewer of wood c. as the Gibeonites were than to divide the Word of Truth to Gods People Had the Apostle here written where Sin abounded Wrath did much more abound this it seems would have gone down easily with you as according to your Palate But blessed be the good Spirit of God whose word it is and blessed be the Hand that first wrote it it is a word of Mercy a word of strong Consolation to the whole Church of God The Magnitude and Redundancy of Divine Grace being infallibly by the abundance of sin made the more conspicuous as the more desperate a bodily Disease is the more is the Virtue and Excellency of the Medicine that Cures it made the more famous and to be extolled Let therefore that word stand firm and stedfast against you which you in your eleventh Paragraph of objections have made light account of viz. that the Grace of God is exalted far above his Judgments and Severities that there where sin has abounded Grace has much more abounded for the solution hereof is not so easie as of many more though you have pretended so of it to your Reader Reflector As to the Salvation of the Children of Heathen Parents or others that is a sealed Book which God doth not permit us to open Answer It is well that you have that Charity for Children yea for the Children of Heathen Parents as well as of others so as not to reckon them among your Thousands and Millions whom you have marked to Destruction for your only Design you say Pag. 27. in this whole Discourse is to speak of men deceased above an Age ago still you shuffle and after they had the exercise and use of Reason It is well I say But you here add the Salvation of such Children is a sealed Book which God doth not permit us to open I will not much argue with you about this though I might nor inquire by what Authority you call the Salvation of Children more than of others who have had the exercise and use of Reason a sealed Book which God doth not permit you to open Possibly you may dream of the Limbus Infantum where Children are kept from the Pains of Hell not having the Pain of Sense but only the Pain of Loss Which Limbus no man could ever open no not the Pope himself for though it is said he hath the Key of Purgatory yet the Key of this place appointed for Children is not it seems committed to his Custody But is the Salvation of Children as you say a sealed Book and is not the Book of Gods Universal Judgment and the Lambs Book of Life sealed Books likewise Yet you dare it seems without Gods Permission yea contrary to Gods express command in Scripture to open these Books and give your Judgment forsooth of them as you please And what is this but to anticipate the Judgment of the great Day The Apostle Reasoned with Faelix of Judgment to come Act. 24.25 and adviseth yea warneth us 1 Cor. 4.5 To judge nothing before the time until the Lord come who is to be the Judge of Quick and Dead Much less should we judge so rashly as to determine of the Number of Gods Elect and that with so peremptory a Sentence as to exclude the major part of Mankind from all hope of Salvation which is the deadly Venome that runs through your whole Discourse It had been good indeed if this your Book had been so sealed that it might have been bound up in everlasting silence never to come forth rather than to do that mischief which it is like to do among poor and weak Christians who have always been apt to despond and not only them but among such as are Prophane to strengthen some in their Atheism which groweth over-Rampant in this Generation and others in their Epicurism and Debaucheries who will be ready to say Seeing there is little or no hope of Mercy for us when we die let us take our Pleasure while we may Eat Drink and be Merry Reflector It is sufficient for us Mortals to know that none is or can be saved but by Jesus Christ But we must not go about to determine whether none are saved but who have known Jesus Christ Answer For us Mortals a word that you use once and again here in your Discourse because you would like your good friends the Quakers take up a form of speech differing from that which is common Otherwise you might have said it is sufficient for us poor Creatures which would have pass'd for current better than your word Mortals For the time will come when this Mortal shall put on Immortality wherein the same Truth shall be known by us then which we now know And do not they that are now Immortal know this that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of the World as well and better than we But I must tell you it is not sufficient for us Mortals as you call us to know this for God hath been graciously pleased to Illighten us poor Mortals and those that are Immortal too to know that none can be saved by Jesus Christ but those that are in Covenant with God Why then do you by affirming so gross an Untruth lessen that knowledge which the Spirit of God in Scripture hath given us saying It is sufficient c. Why indeed but because you was loth to extend the work of Salvation so far as to reach to those Thousands and Millions which you will have to be damned for they also may for ought you know be in Covenant with God as well as your self Men may guess at your meaning Don Doctor though you speak it not out as you ought to speak it You say further we must not go about to determine whether none be saved but who have known Jesus Christ Was there ever such a Don known before that will take upon him so imperiously to judge the
Scripture which contains it And that it will be his Eternal Happiness if it be now his principal Care Study and Endeavour to obey c. Whereto may be joyned what one of his said English Divines affirmeth Pag. 24. viz. That Gods Mercies are offered to us in such a manner that nothing is required of us but that we would Accept them without any thoughts of our own so much unworthiness to hinder and keep us from it that as his Promises are of Grace and Mercy so likewise are they Rich and Great That in truth they are made to those that believe but also that Faith is a Gift of God and he gives it as liberally as he grants the pardon of sins And who is there that will not now be ready to say if all this be so to what purpose is all this heat and fury in so bold uncharitable condemning the major part of mankind to Hell-fire Do not these words of his English Divines some of whom as Owen Baxter were as Oracles unto him speak aloud to the World that the Doctor might well have saved himself the labour of writing his Reflections upon the Number of Gods Elect For they do plainly prove his Thousands Hundred Thousands Millions Millions of Millions that shall be damned to be Insignificant Cyphers as to Gods secret Purpose and Decree and likewise as to his Will revealed in Holy Scripture One thing I consess there is which he writeth of these Divines but hath been here omitted which I for my part cannot but except against that is that they have mingled with all these Lenitives such a Corrosion as may in some sin sick Patients prove for ever destructive to their precious Souls viz. that the greatness of Repentance ought to be commensurate to the Greatness and Enormity of the sins that have been committed What warrant those men or any else can have for this Assertion is beyond my reach I confess somewhat may be said for it from Reason if we consider what passeth between us poor Creatures when we are offended each with other it is but sit that the Quality of the Repair or Acknowledgment should be apportioned according to the Quality of the Offence but doth God require the same of us for our Violation of his Law as if satisfaction should be given to his Justice by our Repentance True it is very good it would be in us all if we did walk humbly with our God all the days of our Lives according to the Hainousness of our Iniquities as Manasseh did when he had sinned greatly against God he humbled himself greatly before the God of his Fathers and when Peter had sinned so wickedly in denying his Master he went forth and wept bitterly But is this the constant method as this Doctor hath said which God hath prescribed in the Conversion of greatest sinners What would then become of those that repent only in Articulo mortis when they are at the point of death Yea what alas will become of us all if this were required of us It is not hanging down our heads like Bul-Rushes nor beating our Breasts nor shedding our Tears though in abundance that will come near to a satisfaction for our Transgressions not but that where true Repentance is in the Heart that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the right word is and natural strength is waiting upon it these external Humiliations will be yea and in some measure ought to be But to make such account of them or to trust unto them as if we had obliged God by them so as to have mercy upon us and that he could not in Justice deny us now the pardon of our sins which is the old Pelagian Error and new Popery down-right this will really prove an Aggravation of our sins and make them exceeding sinful To this purpose hear what Mr. Bilney a faithful Martyr of Christ in the Reign of Hen. 8th once said of such kind of Doctrine as this is if saith he I had heard such Preaching of Repentance in times past I should utterly have fallen into Desperation And in his writing to Dr. Tonstall Bishop of London he hath these words viz. To speak of one of your famous Men After he had sharply inveighed against Vice wherein he did well for it cannot be too much abhorred he thus concluded behold said he thou hast lien rotten in thine own Lusts it may be by the space of threescore years even as a Beast in his own Dung and wilt thou presume in one year to go forward toward Heaven and that in thine Age as much as thou wentest backward from Heaven toward Hell in threescore years Is not this think you saith that good Martyr a goodly Argument is this the Preaching of Repentance in the Name of Jesus Or rather is it not to tread down Christ with Anti-Christ 's Doctrine For what other thing did he speak in effect than that Christ died in vain for poor sinners He will not it seems by this Preaching be our Jesus or Saviour but we must make satisfaction for our selves by our Repentance else we shall perish eternally Then doth St. John lye quoth he in saying Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the World And in another place His Blood cleanseth us from all our sins and again He is the Propitiation for the sins of the whole World c. Thus he like one that well understood the Mystery of the Gospel and good it were if we did so all of us that pretend to be Preachers of truth in this Generation These things considered let not so high an esteem be set upon that Doctor as to Account him infallible for it is certain he was deceived and he himself did find it so before he died as appeareth by his own confession on his Death-bed I am loth to say what hath been written to me of him by a Neighbour-Minister who for his Learning and Piety is wortly of a due Regard as that he the said Dr. Moulin had some private ends and hints and that he had been prompted to this ill Office upon those Accounts But this I will affirm constantly if after all this friendly warning that hath been given to those that tenaciously stick to his Opinions now since his Decease and will publickly Advance after him a word that he commonly used in his Errors so making them worse at the last than they were at the beginning I say no more but Oculus ad finem the coming of the Lord draweth near when every mans work shall be made manifest whether it be Wood Hay Stubble or that which is precious and will endure the searching fire of Gods Spirit which will one day try every mans work of what sort it is And seeing that sundry Errors as well of the Church of Rome as of other false Brethren have crept in among us I have here produced several Arguments against that unreasonable Doctrine of Transubstantiation and tho' I kno ' many learned Authors have