Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	great_a	spirit_n	word_n	3,910	5	3.9744	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54854	A seasonable caveat against the dangers of credulity in our trusting the spirits before we try them delivered in a sermon before the King at White-Hall on the first Sunday in February, 1678/9 / by Thomas Pierce ... ; published by His Majesties especial command.	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1679 (1679)	Wing P2196; ESTC R36679	18,442	42

Enemies do persecute and oppress the mystical Members of the same Body whereof Christ is the Head who lay the Cross of Christ Iesus on Christian Shoulders robbing one of a Living another of a Liberty a third of a Life and this for no other Crime than being constantly Conscientious and very real Friends to All because the Flatterers of None though able to injure or to oblige them must needs be managed by That carnal and unclean Spirit which makes them so fruitfull and so abounding in the works of the Flesh such as Hatred Variance Wrath Strife Seditions Heresies and the like § 8. Now if All these Particulars be laid together in our minds I suppose we have a Touchstone to Try the Spirits of Pretenders whether or no they are of God and such a Touchstone as needs not it self another Touchstone to be Try'd by But because the best Touchstone is nothing worth to such as know not how to use it we shall doe well to take notice of one Rule more in the using of it For considering how many Vices do too much border and confine upon several Vertues and how many Lies are more plausible to flesh and bloud than many Truths and hardly any thing can be so false but may have Colours and Probabilities to set it off being neatly laid on by men ingeniously wicked and that a multitude of Ignaro's do often swallow the grossest Errours presented to them in the Disguise of the greatest Truths by not distinguishing Words as they ought from Things and blending one thing with another and taking them down all at once without any masticating or chewing I say for This reason we must not pass our last Iudgement upon Pretenders to the Spirit untill we have made our selves acquainted as well with their Habits as with their Acts as well with the main or general current of their Lives as with the meer conduct and carrying-on of their Designs with the Means they make use of as well as with the End they pretend to aim at with the Building which is erected as well as with the Scaffold by which 't is rais'd with All their Actions in a lump as well as with the most specious and fairest of them And when This is done throughly Then let the Hypocrites and Impostors be what they will let the Forms of Godliness and the Features of Religion be never so artificially and neatly drawn let the Colours be laid on with never so delicate a Pencill and let that Pencill also be managed with never so exquisite Address 't will be most easie to find the difference between the Picture and the Life Let Zeuxis his lively Grapes be never so apt to deceive the Birds yet the Deadness of his Boy will unfold the Cheat. § 9. The very Truth of it is We should be utterly unexcusable if we should fall into the Snare of The certain men among us crept in unawares of either sort because their Arts of deceiving are gross and obvious fit to infatuate Understandings of the lowest size onely and such as are willing to be deluded There were Counterfeits in the most primitive and purest Times of the Church who were brave Cheats indeed who besides their Form of Godliness besides their Praying and their Preaching could also set forth themselves by Signs and Wonders The Devil had taught them That subtil Trick of transforming themselves into Angels of light and so of deceiving if it were possible the very Elect. Such were Barchochebas Apollonius and Simon Magus Whereof the First had got a faculty even of vomiting flames of Fire the Second could tell the men of Ephesus what in That very Hour was done at Rome the Third like a Cherub could fly abroad into the Air. So that They had some kind of Colour for their giving out themselves to be the Messengers of Heaven some Pretences for their Broaching a New Theology to the People because their Counterfeited Miracles however derived from below might seem at least to short Reasons to have been given them from Above And to be couzen'd by such as These were a more tolerable Infirmity a Credulity more to be pitied and very much more rather than less to be pardon'd also The Magicians also in Aegypt were such admirable Deceivers that They were able as well as Aaron to turn their Rods into Serpents and their Slime into Frogs and their Waters into Bloud So as if Moses and Aaron through God's Assistance had not publickly convicted them of downright Sorcery and Inchantment wherein the Magicians grew eminent through the Assistance of the Devil If Aaron's Rod at last had not swallow'd up Their Rods and turn'd the Dust into Lice through all the Land w ch the Magicians could not doe but confessed to their own shame that The finger of God was in it Lastly if Moses had not smitten the very Sorcerers themselves as well as the rest of the Aegyptians with Boyls and Blains insomuch that the Magicians could not stand before Moses They had had a shrewd Advantage in the deceiving of the People and the People so deceiv'd had been excusable à Tanto Whereas our modern Enthusiasts or Pretenders to Revelation and to a Testimony within them from God the Holy Ghost are not so much as good Iugglers They are woefull Impostors and silly Cheats such as Satan indeed has furnished with very much Industry but with very small Wit whereby He does not more strongly Tempt them than he discovers them to be His. They being so far from being indow'd with extraordinary Gifts whereby to prove to us an extraordinary Commission so far from setting out themselves by Signs and Wonders like those Primitive Deceivers of whom our Saviour gave all his Disciples Warning in the 24 th of S. Matthew or like Those of whom Moses forewarn'd His People in the 13 th of Deuteronomy that they come short of most men of the Church of England even in Those very things wherein they would be thought eminent The onely Gifts of the Spirit which they pretend to are but Praying and Preaching in their Performances of which they signalize themselves by Nothing or at least by nothing more than Noise and Nonsense The Gift of Tongues or the Gift of Healing or the Gift of being subject to Higher Powers for Conscience sake or for the Lord's or any other such remarkable Apostolical Gift of the Holy Ghost I never heard that our Adversaries on either side did ever yet so much as pretend unto They seem to be as unapt to obey their Governors for Conscience sake which is one special Gift of the Holy Ghost as to speak with new Tongues or to raise the Dead § 10. Now if those Exquisite Pretenders in the Infancy of the Gospel Barchochebas a Iew and Apollonius Tyanaeus an arrant Heathen Simon Magus Menander Basilides and the like who by Profession at least were Christians were not Then to be believ'd notwithstanding their Inchantment and Magick-miracles If a false

God as they were call'd who still asserted the Law of Moses and disswaded men with vehemence from Idolatry and Schism were fain to prove they were of God by unfeigned Miracles By such a Real Miracle of the anonymous Prophet at Bethel Ieroboam's Hand was dry'd up and restored to him By such a Miracle of Elijah the Fire of the Lord fell down from Heaven and consum'd the Burnt-sacrifice together with the Altar on which it lay Whereby the People were incens'd against the false Prophets of Baal and presently slew them all as Cheats by the River Kishon By such a Miracle of Elisha even Naaman an Idolater was suddenly cleansed from his Leprosie and convinced of Iehovah's being the onely true God By the like unfeigned Miracles Moses baffled all the lying ones of the Sorcerers in Aegypt And if the Prophets Then had need of shewing many and great Miracles to prove the Truth of That Religion which the Israelites were then in Possession of How much a greater need of Miracles should our Seducers stand in whereby to make us leave our Old and wherewith to draw us on to their New Beliefs That Doctrin for example of Iesus Christ and his Apostles that we must obey them who have the Rule over us and that we must submit our selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lord's sake was confirmed by greater Miracles if any greater can be then Moses and the Prophets confirm'd theirs by And by Consequence if our Pretenders to supernatural lllumination will have us adhere to their New Doctrin that we must not submit to every Ordinance of man but rebell against them nor obey but resist such as have the Rule over us nor do any thing in Religion with any Decency or Order but all as rudely and as confusedly as we can they must perswade us by greater Miracles than those of Christ and his Apostles whom we believe At least they must be able to convince us of Errour in Life and Doctrin as Moses did Corah and all his Separatist-Relations by commanding the Earth to open and to swallow us up quick or strike us dead without a blow just as Peter did Ananias for our usurping That Authority to preach God's Word which our Schismaticks and Enthusiasts of each Extreme are wont to arrogate as a Right belonging onely to themselves But God knows we have too many who need no working of Signs and Wonders to deceive them so very fond they are of Novelties in Religion it self that they are often drawn from it without a Miracle Yea if the True Prophet from Iudah could suffer himself to be deceiv'd by the cunning False Prophet who dwelt in Bethel 1 King 13.18 for which not the False but the True Prophet was slain v. 24. how apt are others to be deceiv'd who are no Prophets at all Very great need therefore we have to Try Pretenders to the Spirit before we Trust them whether or no they have indeed a Prophetick Spirit and whether they speak the mind of God by any Immediate Revelation § 6. A general Rule whereby to try them though 't is particularly apply'd S. Iohn sets down in the next verse after my Text Hereby know ye the Spirit of God Every Spirit which confesseth that Iesus Christ is come in the Flesh is of God A Text whose pithy Brevity makes it difficult and obscure and so it stands in some need of an Explication I take its meaning to be This. Every Spirit which confesseth or every Pretender who owns our Saviour not onely by word of Mouth but in Life and Practice and from the Heart both as Iesus a Saviour and as Christ a King too Every one who does own him as well by his Faith as his Confession and as well by his Obedience as by his Faith to be the onely true Shiloh that was to come Every one who does own him to be come in the Flesh too not onely in his Divine but in his Humane Nature also which Cerinthus and Ebion and Simon Magus did deny unto whom in particular S. Iohn alludes in this place lastly Every one who owns him in his Exinanition in his most despicable Condition which made his Friends to fly from him and Peter himself to disavow him Every one who does own him in his tremendous Crucifixion his Death and Burial and confesseth him even so to be the Son of the living God or God manifest in the Flesh 'T is plain that every such Spirit must be concluded to be of God So that if any shall here object against S. Iohn's Rule of Triall that many Hereticks and Schismaticks do confess Iesus Christ to be come in the Flesh who notwithstanding are of the Devil and not of God Two Answers are to be given for the Objector's behoof and satisfaction one from Estius and another from Tirinus Though the Substance of them Both I have anticipated already Estius answers that S. Iohn did direct This Rule against the Hereticks of his own Times who denied Iesus Christ to have come in the Flesh and such were those Three whom I nam'd a little before Which Answer is indeed good but not sufficient Tirinus therefore adds fitly that by our Confessing Iesus Christ to have come in the Flesh is meant our Confessing and Believing to wit our practical Believing that Iesus Christ is the Messias both a Saviour and a Prince as S. Peter calls him who gives Repentance unto Israel and Forgiveness of sins Not Forgiveness without Repentance nor Forgiveness before Repentance but Repentance in the first place and Forgiveness in the second In which very order both of Dignity and Nature S. Peter had exhorted to Both before ch 3. v. 19. Repent and be converted that your Sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And all sincere Repentance implies Obedience as the same S. Peter argues Act. 5.32 This Answer is very good and sufficient too unless by being too short it may be also too obscure or not sufficiently perspicuous to some of the slowest apprehensions for which defect in the next place I shall endeavour to make amends § 7. And because where the Touchstone it self is False all sorts of Trial must needs be foolish Therefore Pretenders to the Spirit are to be try'd by such a Touchstone as needeth not it self Another Touchstone for its Trial. And such a Touchstone is to be taken out of those plainest Places of Scripture whose sense and meaning is agreed on even by men of All Iudgements Texts deliver'd in such clear and univocal Terms that opposite Parties do apprehend them in the very same way And as they never have been yet so they never can be matter of any Cavil or Dispute And because I pretend not to teach my Fellow Teachers or such as need not to be thus taught though the most knowing may not disdain to be put in remembrance of what they know but onely the