Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A Word B Word C Word D Occurrence Frequency Band MI MI Band Prominent
cause_n body_n soul_n spiritual_a 1,721 5 6.6792 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
A63842 A discourse of the government of the thoughts by George Tullie ... Tullie, George, 1652?-1695. 1694 (1694) Wing T3238; ESTC R1827 60,979 194

There are 2 snippets containing the selected quad. | View lemmatised text

or any other Prayers by the bare telling over as the manner of some is and stringing up their Petitions We durst not thus mock our Prince to his Face we would hardly do it to our Equals and whence then is it but through want of preparing our Hearts with due Conceptions of his Awful and Majestick Presence in his own House that we make thus bold with our Maker 3. IT might be a proper preparatory reflection to consider the Fruits and Consequences of approaching God in so careless and so incogitant a Manner I shall not go about to shew at large how severe God has formerly been upon all disorders and irregularities committed about holy Things and Duties as in the Case of Aarons Sons of Vzzah of Lev. 10. 2. 2 Sam. 6. 6. the Bethshemites and of the Church 1 Sam. 6. 19. 1 C●r 11. 30. of Corinth nor how he threatn'd that for this very thing because his People drew near to him with their Lips but had removed their Heart far from him he would therefore Isa 29. 13 14. proceed to do a marvellous Work among them even a marvellous Work and a Wonder Which was no less than to confound the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the prudent Men amongst them I shall not I say insist on these Considerations now because it has seem'd good to the infinite Wisdom to alter the nature of his Inflictions and for neglects of this kind especially to change them from temporal into spiritual which tho they do not so immediately affect the Body as the others did yet endanger the Soul and take away the spiritual Life of a Christian For tho he do's not now smite Men with Death for their unsanctified Approaches to him yet he smites them with Deadness with Coldness and Indifferency in the cause of Religion suffers them to grow listless reasty and awkard at their Devotions and ten to one to lapse at long run into open Atheism and Prophaneness For we certainly lose ground by every spiritless Prayer we advance grow from bad to worse from worse to stark nought and past feeling For every such formal performance grieves the Spirit cloggs the Conscience hardens the Heart and gives the Devil an occasion to draw us off from our Neutrality and to make us at last declare for his Party whence it is not improbable that when we have once contracted such a vitious habit and crasis of Soul in Devotion he himself many times sends us to our Prayers adding that he may add to our Disease and turn the best Antidote we have against him into so much stronger Poison to our selves And therefore we would do well to season and prepare our Hearts beforehand with these and the like Considerations that by a just Reslection upon the Importance of the Duty the Supream Majesty to whom we pay it and the fatal Consequences of a perfunctory Performance of it we may attend upon the Lord without Distraction III. ANOTHER proper means to fix our Thoughts in the Service of God is to Love him with all our Hearts with all the Powers and Capacities of our Souls did we Delight to have our Conversation with Him our Hearts would keep our Minds close to their Work and not suffer them to loiter or to ramble for our Affections have an immediate Influence upon our Thoughts and our Hearts generally sets our Mind the Theme of its Contemplations Love particularly is a commanding and imperial Passion that bids us go and and we go come and we come do this and we do it a passion that ingrosses all our Powers binds us fast to and runs our Thoughts so deep into its Object that we have neither Leisure nor Patience hardly Power to attend to any others O how I love thy Law says holy David and then it follows both in him and in the nature of the things it is my Meditation all the Ps 119. 97. Day and the first part of his Character of a good Man is that his Delight is in the Law of the Lord and the second is the natural Result of the first that in his Law doth he meditate Day and Night Ps 1. 2. For a Man cannot but pore and muse on the thing he delights in and therefore were our Hearts ravished with the Love of God from just and retired Reflections upon the benefits of Creation Preservation Redemption and the Glory that hereafter shall be Revealed did we but kindle this holy Flame in us by frequent Considerations of his patience forgiveness forbearance the Abyss of his Love and the great depths of his infinite beneficence things that must needs render the Deity amiable and lovely to us in our Conceptions of him all our motions would tend Heaven wards when once invigorated with impressions from that celestial Fire we should not be at leisure to admit any Rival of God in our Thoughts and to attend to those little idle Toys and Fancies that have the impudence to step into our Closets and distract us IV. MEDITATION is another proper Remedy of the wandring of our Thoughts in Prayer The Hill of Meditation is indeed of difficult but yet of noble Ascent that lifts us up so far above our natural Level that we look down upon the World and all its Enjoyments which so frequently interrupt our Devotions as a very little Thing 'T is an heroic and abstracted Operation of the Soul that lets us into the very secrets of the Objects we Contemplate that makes every day fresh Discoveries and gives us both deep and diffused Prospects of things otherwise invisible the Telescope of the Mind whereby we descry new Worlds a new Heaven and a new Earth the Terra incognita of Nature and Grace and see things at an immense distance from us It opens to us the Scene of Paradise it self makes a sort of indistance betwixt God and our own Souls takes us out or at least makes us forget that we are Flesh fills our head with those elevated Conceptions and warms our Heart with those Ravishments of Joy that we can feel indeed but cannot utter or express them And he who has never yet been experimentally sensible of this Truth never yet rightly enjoyed either God or himself has the most exquisite Pleasure of this Life yet to come and wants the preparatory Foretaste of the enjoyments of the other Meditation in a word I mean where God is the Object both quickens and fixes our Devotion which embraces not its Object but in proportion as Meditation gives it Entrance V. AND Lastly Solitude gives a mighty fixation of Thought in private and Religious Assemblies in publick Devotion for a Retreat naturally tends to Recollection of the Spirit and Communion with God it helps to center all the Emanations of our Souls upon him and gives us more pure and perfect Prospects and therefore when thou prayest says he who taught us to pray enter into thy Closet not only to avoid that vain Pomp and
his Fingers the Moon and the Stars which he hath ordained Those Immense fire Works whose motion is as regular Ps 8. 3. as rapid and are but as the twilight of the everlasting Day and of that Light which is inaccessible Read him further yet in the amazing Instance of his Grace when he reconciled the World to himself in Christ let the Mystery of Godliness be ever present to thy Mind God manifest in 1 Tim. 3. 16. the Flesh justified in the Spirit seen of Angels preach'd unto the Gentiles believed on in the World received up into Glory But it cannot be imagin'd that I should enter into the detail of those innumerous Objects that afford proper Matter for the Contemplation and Improvement of our Thoughts and therefore the succinct Advice of the Apostle will appositely take place here Whatsoever things are true whatsoever are honest whatsoever things are iust whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely whatsoever things are of good report If there be any Virtue or if there be any Praise think on these Things For the Truth and Reason of all is the Spirit of a Man is an active restless Principle of internal Motion that will not be wholly idle but will be doing tho it be nothing to the purpose rather than do just nothing at all And therefore unless you furnish it with good stuff to work upon it will take up with that which is next at hand at all adventures so that if we would bring forth good things in our Saviours Language we must with his good Man have a good treasure in our Hearts How precious are thy Thoughts to me O God says holy David how great is the sum of them not Ps 139. 17. a small inconsiderable Stock of Piety and Knowledge but a Treasure a good Fond or Bank for our Thoughts to trade with and then we shall increase with the increase of God King Solomon requiring us to bind the divine Law continually upon our Hearts adds that when we go it shall lead us When we sleep Prov. 6. 22. it shall keep us and when we awake it shall talk with us i. e. It will entertain our Thoughts and bear them Company when we are alone or as it 's said upon the same Occasion when we walk by the way Deut. 6. 7. when we lie down and when we rise up Times generally of the greatest Retirement But now without this good Society at Home our Thoughts will certainly seek out for new Acquaintance gad abroad for fellowship with some other Objects and ten to one in their jant fall into bad Company Associate with the Lusts of the Flesh the Lust of the Eye or the Pride of Life and get those ill haunts that our Minds perhaps may never after have the power to abandon BUT because neither Nature nor Education has furnish'd all Men with equal matter for their Thoughts and there are different sizes in Understanding as well as in Stature therefore VII ONE would advise to a more comprehensive Expedient for the government of Thoughts which every one is capable of using and that is for Men to be diligent and industrious in that Calling or Station wherein Providence has placed them to do as the wise King advises with all their might what their hands find to do For this confines the stream of our Thoughts to their proper Channel and hinders them from overflowing their Bank this hedges in the ramblers and keeps them to their own Inclosure who if left unconfined would like Jeremy's wild Ass snuff up the Wind and observe no measures God who is the Father of the Spirits of all Flesh knew that he had made them active restless things and therefore to imploy and find them work to keep them doing as they ought when they are not immediately ingaged in his Service he design'd Men their respective Callings and Professions and six parts of time in seven for them to take up their Thoughts and imploy them and if they are not thus ingaged about their own Business 't is odds but that like St. Paul's busie Bodies they wander from House to House mind other Men's and meddle with many Matters which may in time cause as great Combustions without as they do disorder the Head within Let our Thoughts then keep within their own lines and make no incroachments hitherto within the circle of our own proper business and Station let their proud waves go and no farther Let his Thoughts who is appointed to the Ministry wait on his Ministring his who is to teach on teaching c. VIII IT were advisable for Men's better ordering their Thoughts to make choice as far as they can of such imployments and course of life as is most suitable to their genius and abilities of Mind for that always sits the easiest on them and their Thoughts more Naturally fall in with their business and abide by it Whereas if Men's imploys lie cross the grain of their inclinations their Thoughts will be perpetually running after something else at which they are not so awkard or if they aspire at things to which their strength bears no proportion matters too high for them and above the sphere of their activity the weight of the burden will render them painful and uneasie make them stagger too and fro like a drunken Man and bring them to their wits end besides the damage they may occasion to the publick as Phaeton endeavouring to mount his Fathers Chariot the management whereof he did not understand was thereby thrown out of Heaven and had like to have set the World on fire IX NEXT to this it may be proper to subjoyn the advice of endeavouring to contract rather then enlarge our secular affairs instead of spreading them wider to reduce them to as tight and narrow a compass as we can that we may the better attend to the improvement of our own Minds an acquisition infinitely beyond the most pompous temporal attainment For what are honours riches pleasures all the World to a brave refined and accomplished Mind Now multiplicity of business is a mighty obstruction to this mental improvement He that thinks of many things thinks of nothing as he that would go several ways stands still it distracts and divides our Thoughts like water mixt with wine debilitates and dilutes them that River will neither be so deep nor so serviceable for Trade that is divided into a great many little channels as that which flows altogether in its own natural bed Thus it is with our Thoughts if we let them out at every little chink which the concerns of the World make in them they 'l be but shallow Thoughts and mar the improvement of our Minds A Ray collected into a point is far more intense than one variously refracted As God do's not love idle so neither over busie people Martha's fault was not that she was imployed in ill but in many things which justled for that time the good part out of