Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
book_n time_n write_v year_n 7,404 5 4.7660 4 true
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
A52422 An idea of happiness, in a letter to a friend enquiring wherein the greatest happiness attainable by man in this life does consist / by John Norris ... Norris, John, 1657-1711. 1683 (1683) Wing N1252; ESTC R16906 19,100 45

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

above him That is not to do any thing contrary to the Divine Love And this is absolute indespensable duty less then which will not qualify us for the enjoyment of God hereafter Now this Seraphic Love which we here discourse of is in the third degree When a Man after many degrees of Abstraction from the Animal Life many a profound and steddy Meditation upon the Excellencies of God sees such a vast Ocean of Beauty and Perfection in him that he loves him to the utmost Stretch of his Power When he sits under his shadow with great delight and his fruit is sweet to his Tast. When he Consecrates and Devotes himself wholely to him and has no Passion for Inferiour Objects When he is ravish'd with the delights of his Service and breaths out some of his Soul to him in every Prayer When he is delighted with Anthems of Praise and Adoration more then with Marrow and Fatness and Feasts upon a Hallelujah When he melts in a Calenture of Devotion and his Soul breaketh out with fervent Desire When the one thing he delights in is to converse with God in the Beauty of Holiness and the one thing he desires to see him as he is in Heaven This is Seraphic Love and this with Contemplation makes up that which the Mystic Divines Stile the Vnitive way of Religion It is call'd so because it Unites us to God in the most excellent manner that we are capable of in this Life By Union here I do not understand that which is Local or Presential because I consider God as Omnipresent Neither do I mean a Union of Grace as they call it whereby we are reconciled to God or a Union of Charity whereof it is said he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him The first of these being as common to the inanimate things as to the most Extasi'd Soul upon Earth And the two last being common to all good men who indeed love God but yet want the excellency of Contemplation and the Mystic Union The Union then which I here speak of is that which is between the Faculty and the Object Which consists in some Habitude or Operation of one toward the other The Faculties here are the Vnderstanding and Will the Object God and the Operations Contemplation and Love The result of which two is the Mystic Vnion Which according to this complex Notion of it that I have here delivered is thus most admirably represented by the excellent Bishop Taylour It is says he a Prayer of quietness and silence and a Meditation extraordinary a Discourse without variety a Vision and Intuition of Divine Excellencies an immediate entry into an Orb of light and a resolution of all our Faculties into Sweetness Affections and Starings upon the Divine Beauty And is carried on to Extasies Raptures Suspensions Elevations Abstractions and Apprehensions beatifical I make no doubt but that many an honest Pious Soul arrives to the heavenly Canaan who is not fed with this Manna in the Wilderness But though every one must not expect these Antepatists of Felicity that is vertuous yet none else must Paradise was never open but to a State of Innocence But neither is that enough No this Mount of God's presence is fenced not only from the profane but also from the Moderately vertuous 'T is the Priviledge of Angelical Dispositions and the reward of eminent Piety and an excellent Religion to be admitted to these Divine Repasts these Feasts of Love And here I place the greatest Happiness attainable by Man in this Life as being the nearest Approach to the State of the Blessed above the Outer Court of Heaven These Sir are my thoughts concerning Happiness I might have spun them out into a greater length but I think a little Plot of ground thick-sown is better then a great Field which for the most part of it lies Fallow I have endeavour'd to deliver my Notions with as much perspicuity and in as good Method as I could and so to answer all the ends of Copiousness with the advantage of a shorter Cut. If I appear singular in any of my Notions 't is not out of an industrious affectation of Novelty but because in the composing of this discourse the Meditation of a few broken hours in a Garden I consulted more my own experimental Notices of things and private Reflections then the Writings of others So that if sometimes I happen to be in the Road and sometimes in a way by my self 't is no wonder I affect neither the one nor the other but write as I think Which as I do at other times so more especially when I subscribe my self Sir Yours most affectionately I. N. Allsouls Colledge Apr. 18. 1683. FINIS Books Printed for James Norris this present Year 1683. MAssinello or a Satyr against the Association and the Guild-hall Riot 4 o Eromena or the Noble Stranger a Novel 8 o Tractatus Adversus Reprobationis Absolutae decretum Nova Methodo Succinetissimo Compendio adornatus in duos Libros Digestus 8 o This in Latin is Writ by the same Author of the Idea of Happiness and these Books are Translated by the same Author out of Greek and Latin into English viz. Effigies Amoris or the Picture of Love Unveil'd 12 o Hierocles upon the Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans 8 o Lib. 3 de Fin. Revel 26. Job 28. Lucretius Enn. 6. lib. 9. cap. 10. Exod. 33.18 Rev. 1.8 1 Ver. 2. Lib. 2. de monachii cap. 2. Cant. 2.3 Psal. 119. Jo. 4.16 The great Exemplar pag. 60.