Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	worship_n	worship_v	worshipper_n	4,806	4	12.4611	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A53750	A true and lively representation of popery shewing that popery is only new-modell'd paganism, and perfectly destructive of the great ends and purposes of God in the Gospel.	Owen, Thankfull, 1620-1681.	1679 (1679)	Wing O830; ESTC R18583	46,596	82

their souls act with the greatest ease and pleasure and constancy and delight he designed by the promulgation of the Gospel 2. In the first place the utter Extirpation and rooting Idolatry out of the World For this is a sin so heynous and so derogatory to the Perfections of the Divine Nature that however it may be subtilized and refined by the crafty Patrons of it yet it doth most certainly thwart and cross that glorious purpose of God in making men like to himself And the reason of it is because it sinks mens minds too much into Body and Matter and so instead of purging their Souls from the gross affections and allurements of the Flesh it depresses and debases their thoughts to the lowest degree of Sensuality Now that when the Evangelical Dispensation should take place upon Earth all Idolatry was to be extirpated and destroyed the Prophets of old have clearly testified Isai 2.17 18 20. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day and the Idols he shall utterly abolish In that day a man shall cast his Idols of Silver and his Idols of Gold which they made each one for himself to worship to the Moles and to the Bats That this Prophecy respects the times of the Messiah is acknowledged by the Jews themselves and may receive a further confirmation from the second and third Verses And it shall come to pass in the last days that the Mountain of the Lords House shall be established in the top of the Mountains and shall be exalted above the Hills and all Nations shall flow unto it For out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem i. e. That in the days of the Gospel which is frequently denoted in Scripture by the last times the worship of the true God shall take place and be established among all Nations and that this Evangelical Dispensation which should be carried and propagated over all the world should begin from Jerusalem where the Apostles of our Lord Jesus received their full and compleat Inauguration into this Office of preaching the Gospel by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them and then in that day all the false Gods and Images of the Heathens shall be utterly thrown asitle and men shall honour and worship the true God only and that in Spirit and in Truth And again Zephan 2.11 The Lord will be terrible unto them for he will famish all the Gods of the Earth and men shall worship him every one from his place even all the Isles of the Heathen i.e. God will abolish and destroy all the Idols and false Deities of the Heathen and all Nations shall be reduced to the worship of the true God the Creator of Heaven and Earth every one in his own Land so that men shall not need to go up to Jerusalem or be obliged to worship God here or there but as Christ speaks the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth And more plainly yet in Zech. 13.2 And it shall come to pass in that day saith the Lord of Hists that I will cut off the names of the Idols out of the Land and they shall no more be remembred and also I will cause the Prophets and the unclean Spirit to pass out of the Land And that this unclean Spirit which sollicited mankind to spiritual whoredome and fornication was chased out of all those parts of the world where the Gospel was preached by the Apostles and their immediate Successors is evident not only from Ecclesiastical story but from the complaints of the Heathen that since the Religion of Jesus prevailed their Oracles were silent and their Sacrifices were offer'd in vain to their phantastick Deities And that this was a main design of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus he himself assures us in his discourse with the Woman of Samaria Joh. 4.21 22 23 24. where when the Woman told our Saviour that the Samaritans worshipped in Mount Ephraim at Shiloh but that the Jews taught that God was to be worshipped only at Jerusalem v. 20. He replies Woman believe me the hour comes when ye shall neither in this Mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship for Salvation is of the Jews But the hour comes and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth for the Father seeks such to worship him God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth The most genuine Interpretation of which-seems to be given by that pious and learned Person Mr. Mede viz. that the Samaritans who worshipped in the Temple of Mount Gerizim though they worshipped the true God yet it was under the visible representation of a Dove and circumcised their Children in the name thereof therefore says Christ ye worship ye know not what i.e. ye worship the God of Israel indeed but 't is under a Corporeal Representation which is an argument you do not know him but God must be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth that is conceiving him as a Spirit and not under any visible shape Therefore Idolatry is a belying God and Idols are termed lyes Amos 2.4 Their lyes caused them to err And Jer. 16.19 Surely our Fathers have inherited lyes the Chaldee have worshipped a lye Our blessed Lord and Saviour coming into the world to correct what was amiss and to reform the manners of mankind and to introduce a more spiritual Religion than the Jewish was it is not to be thought but he would in the first place design the Eradication of Idolatry which so much debases the soul of man and dishonours the Supreme Deity by representing him in a gross and material way and likewise by giving his Incommunicable Excellencies and Perfections to a Creature Sure it is the Primitive Christians retained so clear and vigorous a sense of the heynousness of this sin and the perfect inconsistency of it with the spirituality of their Religion that they chose rather to endure all manner of torments and die a thousand deaths than in the least manner pollute their souls with so gross an immorality Pertinent hereunto is that observation which is made that in the first part of the Jewish Talmud which was made about 200 years after Christ there is no accusation or complaint brought against the Christians for this Idolatry of Image-worship but in the second part which was finished about the year 500. when the Church of Christ began to Paganize there and in all the Commentaries of the Rabbins published in the Tenth or Eleventh Age the Jews call the Christian Churches the Houses of Idolatry It being plain then that Christ Jesus came to eradicate Idolatry which both spoiled the nature of the soul by sinking it into matter and fearfully dishonoured the true and ever-living God I come now to shew wherein the Pagan Idolatry chiefly consisted which was in these two things

1. In worshipping other inferiour Gods together with the true God these lower sort of Gods being looked upon as a kind of middle Beings or Mediators between the Supreme God and them And 2. In worshipping both the supreme and subordinate Gods in Images and Statues That the Pagans acknowledged the true God the Maker of Heaven and Earth but that their Errour was in worshipping more subordinate Beings together with him and both the Supreme and Inferiour Gods in Images Statues or Symbols is the constant Opinion of the Jews who being the only Nation before Christianity that opposed the Heathen Polytheism and Idolatry were most likely to understand the ground and bottom of it I find two quotations cited by an eminently learned Person out of two Jewish Rabbins which do give us fully and excellently the sense and notion of the Jews concerning the Pagan Idolatry The first is out of Maimonides You know that whoever commits Idolatry he doth it not as supposing that there is no other God besides that which he worships for it never came into the minds of any Idolaters nor never will that that Statue which is made by them of Metal or Stone or Wood is that very God who created Heaven and Earth but they worship those Statues and Images only as the representation of something which is a Mediator between God and them The other is one Moses Albelda The Idolaters first argued thus says he in respect of God that since he was of such transcendent Perfection above men it was not possible for men to be united to or have communion with him otherwise than by means of certain middle Beings or Mediators as it is the manner of Earthly Kings to have Petitions conveyed to them by the hands of Mediators and Intercessors Secondly they thus argued likewise in respect of themselves that being Corporeal so that they could not apprehend God abstractly they must needs have something sensible to excite and stir up their Devotion and fix their Imagination upon The very same cover as I shall shew afterwards with which the Papists would palliate their Polytheism and Idolatry For the Devil has only shifted the Scene and that Apostacy of the sons of men which he could no longer uphold under open and broad-fac'd Paganism he still successfully manages under the unmeet cover of the plausible name of Christianity But we need not relye upon these Testimonies altogether since S. Paul affirms the same of the Heathens that they were not unacquainted with the knowledge of the true God but that their great miscarriage consisted in worshipping many inferiour Gods and then in worshipping the true God and all those other created and dependent Deities in Statues and Images That God left not himself without witness in the most barbarous parts of the world but furnished all mankind with such a knowledge of himself as might and ought to have kept them from all sorts of Idolatry if they had been faithful to the light and natural inscriptions of their own souls appears from Rom. 1.21 When they knew God they glorified him not as God because they fell into Polytheism and Idolatry And also v. 19. That which might be known of God was manifest within them God having shewed it unto them The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. that of God which is knowable his Eternal Power and Godhead with the Attributes belonging thereunto is made manifest to all mankind from his works In which places 't is evident that the Pagan Nations were never destitute of the knowledge of the true God and that this knowledge was not some obscure glimmering but such a clear knowledge of his Eternal Power and Godhead as might have kept them had it not been their own fault from Polytheism and Idolatry Now that the Heathens worshipped many subordinate and inferiour Gods together with the true God that is that they joyned Creature-worship with the worship of the Creator the same Apostle says expresly V. 25. they worshipped the Creature more than the Creator which words are not so to be understood as if the Pagans transferred their Religious worship wholly upon the Creature the Creator in the mean time being altogether passed by but thus They worshipped the Creature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides the Creator or else They worshipped the Creature above or more than the Creator as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used comparatively so as to signifie excess as Luk. 13.2 4. Think ye that these Galileans were sinners 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above all the Galileans and sinners 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above all men According to either of which Interpretations it is supposed that the Pagans did worship the true God the Creator of the world though they worshipped the Creature also besides him or perhaps in some sense above him and more than him also Which latter Interpretation I have the rather added because it suits so well with that egregiously Paganical practice of the Romish Church in their worship of the Virgin Mary to whom they put up ten prayers for one directed to God Almighty Another instance we have in Act. 17. where S. Paul tells the Athenians that as he beheld their sacred Monuments he found an Altar with this Inscription To the unknown God and upon this adds whom therefore you ignorantly worship that is under the name of the unknown God him declare I unto you the God that made the world and all things in it the Lord of Heaven and Earth From whence it is evident 1. That by the unknown God was meant the true God the Creator of all things 2. That those Pagans did religiously worship the true God Afterwards the Apostle citing a passage out of Aratus censures their sottishness in giving Religious worship to an Image made of Gold or Silver representing the true and ever-living God in some Corporeal Symbol 3. Secondly this Divine Nature which God intended to form in men by the Gospel consisting in a very great measure in the purity and holiness of their spirits our Lord Jesus does by all means discountenance all manner of sin and evil faithfully declaring to all the world the Mind and Pleasure of God herein and assuring us that whoever will be happy must likewise be holy That the Christian Dispensation which is Gods last and only Method which he has made known for the salvation of Mankind is so far from palliating mens Corruptions or giving them a liberty and indulgence to sin that it most strictly prohibits all even the least kind of vice and iniquity and commands an Universal Holiness to run through all our Actions And that we may not expose and betray our selves to ruine and misery by vain conceits and imaginations either that an External and Pharisaical Righteousness will be sufficient or if it must be otherwise that yet we are not bound up to such strict Measures as the common Preachers of Religion perswade us we are to consider that our Lord Jesus going on with that great