Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
book_n add_v holy_a scripture_n 1,651 5 5.5616 4 false
View all documents for the selected quad

Text snippets containing the quad

ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A44763 The vision, or, A dialog between the soul and the bodie fancied in a morning-dream. Howell, James, 1594?-1666. 1651 (1651) Wing H3127; ESTC R11503 50,341 190

There is 1 snippet containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

c. The Roman Catholicks though they Invoke Saints and pray for the dead c. All these with sundrie sorts of Christians besides all the while they have the Symbole of saving Faith and same Apostolical Creed with me all the while they have the Decalog and holy Scriptures I have so much Charitie to hold that they differ from me not as much in Religion as in Opinion Now Opinion is that great Ladie which sways the World therefore I wish that they might go up the same scale of bliss with me Nor are the Swi●s and Gritons to be hated because they permit the Lutheran to preach in one end of the Church and the Calvinist in the other yet in thei● moral civilities and negotiations they live peaceably together To conclude this discours touching common Charitie and Love 't is tru my Fellow-cretures my Kindred and Friends have a great share of it but I reserve the quintessence thereof for my Creator and Saviour the one being the sea the other the spring of all felicitie I love my Creator a thousand degrees more than I fear him which makes me praise him more often than pray unto him and for matter of fear as I displayed my self elsewhere I fear none more than my self who am indeed my greatest foe I mean those obliquities and depravations which are my inmates whereof the ill spirit takes his advantage ever and anon to make me run into aberrations so that I may say I stand more in fear of my self than of the devil or death who is the king of fears Now touching this Elixer of love that I reserve for my Creator it melted one morning into these Stanzas As the parchd field doth thirst for rain When the Dog-star makes Sheep and Swain Of an unusual drowth coplain So thirsts my heart for Thee As the chac'd deer doth pant and bray After some brook or cooling bay When hounds have worried her astray So pants my heart for Thee As the forsaken Dove doth mone When her beloved mate is gone And never rests while self-alone So mones my heart for Thee Or as the teeming Earth doth mourn In black like Lover at an urn Till Titan's quickning beams return So do I mourn mone pant thirst For Thee who art my last and first Soul I am glad beyond measure to hear these discourses drop from you first that you make so good use of the objects of this Inferior world as to study your Creator in them proceeding from the effects to the search of the cause which is the method of Philosophy whereas the Theolog proceeds commonly from the cause to the effect The Pagan Philosophers by the twilight of nature soard so high that they came to discover there was a primus Motor an Ensentium an optimus maximus they came to know that he was ubiquitary and diffus'd through the Universs to give vigor life and motion to all parts as I do in that bodie of yours though invisibly if I may be so bold as assimilat so incomprehensible a greatness to so small a thing Now there is no finit intellect can form a quidditative apprehension of God no not the Angels themselves There may be negative conceptions of him as to say he is immortal immense independent simple and infinit c. Or there may be relative conceptions had of him as when we call him Creator Governor King c. Or there may be positive conceptions of him as the chiefest Good a pure Act or he may be described by an aggregation of Attributs as Mercifull Wise Pious c. But for the comprehensive quidditie of God it cannot be understood by any created Power Among all these one of the best wayes to describe him is by Abstracts as to call him goodness it self Justice it self Power Pity Piety it self He being the rule of all these some of those ancient Wisards among the Egyptians and Grecians came by reach of natural resons to the knowledge of one Incomprehensible Guide and conserver of the Univers specially Tresmegistus and Socrates but they durst not broach their opinions publiquely for fear of the fury of the Peeple among whom there was a kind of zeal in those dark times Plato flew as high as Socrates his Master in Divinitie and among other Passages throughout his Works there is one that is very pregnant for Writing to a friend of his he saith When I write to thee seriously I begin my Epistle with God save thee when otherwise The Gods save thee Aristotle Plato's scholler courted Nature onely groping her secrets a great Philosopher he was and no less a Sophister he was the first that entangled Philosophy with subtilties coin'd words and Paralogisms as the Classicans did first distract divinitie so that it was no improper Character which one gave That Aristotles school was a great skold Touching the celestial bodies I love you the better that you are affected with them so much that you sometimes speculat and spel your Creator among the stars Now some of the Rabbins hold that the word Iehovah which is the highest name of God Almightie and pronounced publickly in the Synagog but once a year may be plainly made up among the Oriental stars Nay they affirm that all the Hebrew letters may be found in the firmament which letters were the true characters of the constellations before the Egyptians came with their Hieroglyphicks that the Greeks hois'd up such monsters so near the throne of God as Bears Bulls Lions Goats Rams and Scorpions together with pitchers and planks of rotten wood They hold moreover that the fate and periods of Monarchies may be read not onely in Comets but in those fixd stars that are vertical over them When Medusa's head was vertical to Greece there were divers that presaged her destruction Ierusalem's ruin was read plainly among the stars some years before Nay Postel a Christian writer takes God and Christ to witness that in the Hebrew characters among the stars vidit omnia quae in Rerum natura constituta sunt he saw all things that were constituted by nature Doubtless that toung which was spoken in Paradise and by the Almightie himself may have some extraordinarie priviledge and mysteries in it nor was Postel lunatic when he broke out into such a protestation But the Authors of this opinion add unto it this caution that he who will be a schollar and a proficient in this sydereal school to spel the stars and studie this book for the Heavens are calld so in holy Scriptures must be an extraordinarie pious patient and prudent wel-wisd man so he may find old Orpheus words to be tru when speaking of God he sings {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thy certain order doth run immutable commands aong the starrs Now touching those ancient notaries of Nature it may be well thought those large Ideas of knowledge they had were illuminations from Heven whence every good and perfect gift