Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	worthy_a	write_n	write_v	22	3	4.9808	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52204	The middle way of predetermination asserted. Between the Dominicans and Jesuites, Calvinists and Arminians, or, A scriptural enquiry into the influence and causation of God in and unto humane actions; expecially such as are sinfull.	Humfrey, John, 1621-1719.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; W. M.	1679 (1679)	Wing H3692A; Wing M95B; ESTC R10732	43,527	48

the Children of God Seeing it hath pleased God to permit Satan and some otherwise Honest men to sow Tares while we slept and to Hazard the Church and the Soules of Men by very dangerous Writings of Late I think you should with Thankfulness receive this Antidote from this Worthy Servant of Christ I add this Notice that he hath a Treatise of Justification new Licensed Written with the same Healing Spirit and Judgment Neglect it not because there is so much Written on that Subject for it tells you more than is ordinarily told you and there are few things written thereon with equal Judgment and plainly fitted to the Edifying of the meanest Capacity if he understand the matter aright who is An earnest Desirer of Truth Love and Concord Rich. Baxter Septemb. 19 1678. THE MIDDLE WAY OF PREDETERMINATION ASSERTED IT 's not unknown to Persons soberly Inquisitive into Truth of what Importance and Concernment in Religion it is so far forth as in us lieth to have a right Understanding and due Conception in our Mind touching the Notive Power of Man in or unto the specifying and determining of his own Acts or Actions as also of the Influence and Causality of God in and unto the determination of the same What is God's Interest and what is mans in the Existence especially of those sinful motions and actions of man which God dehorteth from and so severely doth prohibit and punish him for A Misconception therein on the one hand or the other may expose us unto the Charging of God foolishly even whil'st we take our selves to be pleading of his Cause and may occasion in us unbecomming thoughts of our selves and hard thoughts of him unworthy the Revelation that he hath made of himself to us tending to Expunge out of our Souls all due sense of Sin and acknowledgment of the Holiness and of the Equity of Gods Law and of his Righteousness in his procedure thereupon with us The Thesis or Position which I maintain in short is this namely That God doth not Premove or by his Transient Influence as the first cause Predetermine men unto all and every of their Acts or Actions whatsoever not in particular to those which are sinful such as Blasphemy Incest Murder c. in specie It 's not my Design to enter the Lifts with any one in the way of Disputat●on nor shall I at all interest my self in the contests of other men Learned and Pious engaged in that Controversie about Predetermination I shall onely speak the sense of my own Soul nakedly therein and what hath been the result of my thoughts upon my most Sedulous enquiry for some years past into the Question which bordereth much upon Practice although controversial no man but at one time or other will have his Thoughts exercised more or less about it It 's a question wherein as well the wisest of the Heathen as of the Christian World have been engaged as well Papists as Prot●stants and that ●qually among themselves as well as each against other And it were earnestly to be wished that Controversies in Religion were managed with more Candour and Moderation without Animosities and Personal Reflections that it might appear that it is the Cause of God singly not our own that we plead and that it is the discovery and promotion of Truth alone that we design which the venting of Humane Passion may hinder but can never further the intertainment of Nor shall I trace the Schools at all in their Notions and various Exp●ications of the matter under consideration It 's every Souls concernment to understand it in some measure and they who cannot Philosophise may for ought I know have as due a Conception and found Judgment therein as to the maine plainly deduced from the word of God as the most Learned Yea I do apprehend that Philosophical Disputes in conjunction with an undue Veneration of some men whom they affect is that which hath rendered the Truth vailed unto many For my part I have chosen rather to study Catechismes next to the Bible for my dir●ction herein than the Dictates of Philosophical men rather consulted the Conviction of Conscience and sense of Mankind than their Scholastical determinations But to come to the Matter it self Some things Preliminary for the due Stating of the Question and ●or Explication sake must be insisted on in our way Let it be noted then 1 The question is not touching Gods Science Prescien●e or Foreknowledge of all futurities his foresight of all the freest actions of man one as well as the o●her For supposing that God will create man and make him a free agent yet mutable and put him under a Law and sustain him in his opperations It 's granted that by his own infinite per●●ction he might do and did foresee in Eternity what he would issue in as future Isa 41 22 23. all his actions good and evil even the sin of them In concreto abstracto Ye● the formale of it its anomie or irregularity which some term a non ens he foreknew but the modus or the way and manner how God foreseeth all future contingencies especially the Fall of man and of Angels is to us unknown at least I sh●ll not for my part enterprise to determine it No principle of the Ch●i●●ian Religion rendring it necessary for us to understand The prescience of God nil ponit in objecto puts nothing into the creature it infers no more than a logical necessity of existence in ordine dicendi a necessity of consequence only Joh. 12.39 It shall be not of consequent or in ordine causandi nothing of causality nor is it concerned at all in the manner of the Subjects determination of it ●elf or of it's operation which is the object of his foreknowledge whether it be a principio dissito from a from a Principle ●xtrinsecal to it as when a stone moves upwards or impetu naturali as when it moves downwards or sponte as brutes act void of coaction or voluntariè liberè according to a judgment of Reason as man freely still God foreseeth the even● but his foresight causeth it not Gods foresight or knowledge what I shall or will do to morrow if I live hath no influence at all into the determining me thereun●o it leaveth me equally free and indetermined as if he foreknew it not at all Nor 's it more difficult to me to conceive or fathom how God should in Eternity foresee the fr●est action of his crea●ure which yet he predetermineth not to but leaveth still in i●s own nature evitable and contingent than it is to me to form any conception of his Eternity or how he came to be God wherein I am lost Ex nihilo nihil fit that of nothing nothing is made is as cogent an argument to me to prove that the world must needs be Eternal as any that ever I met with to prove that God cannot foresee what he doth not decree to eff●ct or that which