Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	holy_a	lord_n	people_n	6,264	5	5.2616	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50417	A sermon concerning unity & agreement preached at Carfax Church in Oxford, August 9, 1646 / by Iasper Maine ...	Mayne, Jasper, 1604-1672.	1647 (1647)	Wing M1477; ESTC R32062	36,818	45

side and all prejudice and hatred against those from whom they differ men would submit themselves to him who is best able to instruct them Or who can bring with him the most saving Truths into the Pulpit Besides may some one say if people should bring minds prepared to entertain the Truth where is that instructor so infallible or so opinionated of the strength of his own gifts and knowledg that another pretending to the same Truth may not challenge to himself the like infallibility who shall be the Judg of Controversies or who shall present Truth to us with such known marks and notes about it that as soon as t is presented every congregation of what mean capacities soever shall presently acknowledg and entertain it Wil you Sir who have all this while thus bemoaningly pitied our divisions We are bound to thank you for your charity to us and should be desirous enough to imbrace a truth of your description But you are a Scholar whose parts and abilities lye in the humane modell and building of your own secular studies We are therefore bid to doubt very much whether you have the Spirit and are told by some who profess themselves inspired that all your Readings and Studyings and tyrings of your self over a difficult piece of Scripture at midnight perhaps when all others sleep by a lone solitary dumb candle are but so many labours in vain Since t is impossible for any to understand the Scripture aright but such only who have it revealed to them by the same holy Spirit that wrote it My Brethren what shall I say to you Modesty and the knowledg I have of my own imperfections wil not allow me to say peremptorily that I have the Spirit of God Or if I could distinguish his secret influences and assistances from the operations of my own soul or could certainly say I have him which S Paul himself durst not say definitively yet 't would not become me so to confine him to my frail narrow parts as to deny him to all others more learned then my self For the setling therefore and composing of your divided minds I will not take upon me to be the Judge of Controversies but you your selves shall be Onely the better to enable you to performe this charitable office to your selves and for your better direction how not to be out in your judgement as a sure clue to guide you through the perplext windings of that labyrinth into which some of you are falne so falne that they seem to me quite lost in a wood of mistakes where every path is a guide and every guide is an error give me leave to commend to you that seasonable advice of Saint John which he delivers in the fourth Chapter of his first Epistle at the first verse where as if he had prophecyed of our times he sayes Beloved beleeve not every spirit but try the spirits whether they be of God because many false Prophets are gone out into the world In which words you have two of the best Rules assigned you to go by that can possibly be prescribed for the settlement of minds First be not too credulous Doe not presently beleeve every man that sayes he hath the Spirit nor suffer your selves to be tost and carried about with every wind of doctrine For that is not the way to be all of one but of as many severall minds as the art or cunning of severall Teachers shall please to work upon you I am perswaded this easinesse of belief this credulity or as the Apostle calls it this admiration this overvaluing of some mens persons hath been one of the great parents of our present dissentions whilst some weak but yet well-minded people building their judgment meerly upon the outward appearances of men have mistaken the zeal and strict life of their Preacher for his sufficiency And taking their Logicke from the precisenesse of his behaviour have framed these charitable but false conclusions to themselves He is a man of a composed countenance of a reserved speech of a grave carriage and of a devout elocution therefore surely he is a holy man And because he is a holy man therefore whatever hee saies shall be to us Oracle as coming from the mouth of one so much in the favour of God that it is impossible he should deceive us or speak that which is not right My Brethren I have no designe or purpose to bring Holinesse into contempt nor can I bee so injurious to piety or a good life where ever I find it as to expose it to the scorne of the licentious by not giving it its due I am so farre also from lending encouragement to the lives of vitious Teachers Teachers who are the shame of their Mother and the scandall of their Flock that I could wish that every Congregation in England were furnished with such an exemplary Minister that his life as well as preaching might be Sermon to the people Nay give me leave I beseech you to extend my charity yet one degree farther I am so farre from disliking holinesse either in Preacher or people that I wish we all made but one united Kingdome of Priests Or if you will have me expresse my selfe in the words of one of the holiest and meekest men of the earth I could wish that all the Lords People were Prophets But then you must give me leave to say too That holinesse and strictnesse and austerity of life are no infallible signes that the Preacher may not erre Nor hath God so annext the understanding of his Word to the unstudied unlearned piety or sober carriage of the Expounder that he that is most zealous shall still bee most in the right As long as that saying of S. Paul remaines upon record That we hold this treasure this knowledge of Gods Will {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in earthen vessells As long as the Preacher how holy soever he be is so much one of the people as to dwell in a fraile weake Tabernacle of clay Lastly as long as men are men they will bee liable to mens infirmities And as the learned scandalous Preacher may be sometimes in the right so it is possible that the ignorant zealous holy Preacher may be often in the wrong How to know this and how to distinguish them therefore you are to make use of the next Rule prescribed to you by Saint John that is when you heare an Exposition or a Sermon or a new Doctrine preached to you not rashly without distinction or choice to consent to it till you have past the impartiall sentence of a cleare judgement on it compared and weighed Sermon with Sermon and Preacher with Preacher called every Doctrine every Proofe every confident Assertion to the touch-stone and measured it by some plaine evident place of Scripture and examined whether the Holy Ghost or his owne vaine popular ambition have for that time inspired the speaker or whether his Sermon have had some dissembled secular end

have encouraged them and as the time hath favoured their Reformation as they have called it proceeded from the rectifying of mens Errors to the lessening of their fortunes And they only have at length been called the wicked who have been rich and have had estates to lose That onely which I shall further say to you of it is this Separation is a sin which hath alwaies veyl'd it selfe in the disguise of sanctity Thus Montanus and his followers broke off Communion with the whole Christian Church then in the world because forsooth 't was revealed to them by divine illumination that the Holy Ghost was no where to be found but in their Conventicle An Heresie which beginning in Schisme proceeded at length to this monstrous conceit among them That only the house of Montanus was the true Church and that Montanus himselfe was the Holy Ghost Thus also the Donatists an over-scrupulous Sect of men divided themselves from the then Catholique Church because it was not pure enough for such sanctified Communicants nor complied with the inspired doctrines of the Father of that Sect. And this it seems was the fault of these Corinthians here in this Text who having intitled themselves to severall Teachers proceeded by degrees to divide themselves into severall Churches and Congregations every one of which challenging to themselves the true and right Religion and charging the others with the name of the false thought at length that no way was left to keep themselves pure and unspotted but by breaking off all Religious nay Civill Commerce and Communion with each other Hence for feare of infection it was held a crime for any but the Righteous to assemble or converse with any but the Righteous or for any to meet together at a spirituall Exercise but such who first agreed in the same purity of Opinions Here then if I may once more take the liberty to parallel one people with another is not this our very case Hath it not been the practice of many many yeares for those who call themselves the godly the righteous the children of the most High to breake off society and communion nay almost neighbourly civility with those whom they call the wicked As there were among the Jewes certaine uncleane places and things and persons which whosoever toucht were for that time uncleane too so hath not the like opinion past among us that there have been certaine unholy unsanctified places and persons which make those who touch or approach neer them unholy too Have not some Pulpits been thought unsanctified because forsooth the Preacher hath been ungifted And wherein I pray hath his ungiftedness appeared Because hee hath not expressed himself in that light fluent running passionate zealous stile which should make him for that time seem religiously distracted or beside himselfe Or because his Prayer or Sermon hath been premeditated and hath not flowne from him in such an Ex tempore loose careere of devout emptinesses and nothings as serve onely to entertaine the people as Bubbles doe children with a thin unsolid brittle painted blast of wind and ayre Or because perhaps the sands of his Glasse have not fleeted for two tedious houres together with nothing but the bold insolent defamation and reviling of his Prince Againe have there not been some who have thought our Temples unholy because the Common-Prayer Booke hath been read there And have renounced the Congregation where part of the Service hath been tuned through an Organ Hath not a dumb Picture in the window driven some from the Church And in exchange of the Oratories have not some in the heat and zeale of their Separation turned their Parlours Chambers and Dining-roomes into Temples and Houses of Prayer Nay hath not Christ been worshipt in places yet more vile and mean In places which have reduced him the second time to a Stable If I should aske the people of both Sexes who are thus given to separation and with whom a Repetition in a Chamber edifies more then a learned Sermon in the Church upon what religious grounds or motives either taken from the Word of God which is so much in their mouthes or from reason which is so little in their practice they thus affect to single and divide themselves from others I believe it would pose them very much to give a satisfying Answer Is it because the persons from whom they thus separate themselves are irreligious wicked men Men who are Christians onely in forme and whose conversation carries nothing but evill example and pollution with it If I should grant this to be true and should allow them to be out-right what they call themselves The Elect and Godly and Holy ones of the earth and other men to be outright what they call them The Reprobate the wicked the ungodly and prophane yet is not this warrant enough to divide or separate themselves from them Nor are they competent Judges of this but God only who by the mouth of his Son hath told us in the Parable that the wheat and corne is not to be separated from the chaffe and tarres when we list but that both are to grow together till the great harvest of the world Till then 't is a piece of the building of it that there bee a commixture of good and bad Besides let me put this Christian Dilemma to them either the persons from whom they divide themselves are holy or unholy If they be holy they are not to separate themselves from them because they are like themselves If they be unholy they are in charity to converse with them that they may reforme and make them better Did not our Saviour Christ and certainely his example is too great to be refused usually converse with Publicans and sinners Did he forsake the Table because a Pharisee made the Feast Or did he refuse a perfume because a harlot powred it on his head Or did he refuse to goe up into the Temple because buyers and sellers were there men who had turned it into a den of Theeves Certainely my Brethren we may like Christ keep company with Harlots and Hypocrites and Publicans and Sinners and yet retaine our innocence 'T is a weake excuse to say I will never consort my selfe with a swearer lest I learne to blaspheme Or I will utterly renounce all familiarity and acquaintance with such and such an Adulterer or with such and such a Drunkard lest I learne to commit Fornication from the one or Intemperance from the other In all such conversations we are to imitate the Sun who shines into the foulest puddles and yet returnes from thence with a pure untainted Ray If mens vices then and corruptions bee not a sufficient cause to warrant a separation what else can be Is it the place of meeting or Church or the things done there which hath made them shun our ordinary Congregations Yes say some we have held it very unlawfull as we conceive to assemble in such a place where we have seen Altars and Windowes