Selected quad for the lemma: head_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
head_n	church_n	member_n	mystical_a	3,558	5	10.4248	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45359	A private letter of satisfaction to a friend concerning 1. The sleep of the soul, 2. The state of the soul after death, till the resurrection, 3. The reason of the seldom appearing of separate spirits, 4. Prayer for departed souls whether lawful or no.	Hallywell, Henry, d. 1703?	1667 (1667)	Wing H465; ESTC R18021	32,635	88

man can give no account or reason from any external cause but only from the purified and more subtle or fulsome and gross steams ascending into the brain and withall consider that the great Crown of our Faith and Patience the happiness and reward of glorified Spirits to purchase which for mankind the ever blessed Son of God left the sacred mansions of Heaven the bosome of blessedness and veiled his glory under the clouds of flesh and blood shall be an ethereall and heavenly body which Plato calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resplendent vehicle and St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual body he I say that attentively perpends this that the instruments of the Souls operations both in this life and the next are corporeal will likewise think it probable that she is not wholly denudated of Matter in the intermediate space between death and the resurrection at what time she shall be possessed of her long expected joy and her vile body shall be transformed into the similitude of the glorious body of the Son of God Supposing then the Soul vitally united with matter after death she will both act and also be capable of pleasure or pain which are the unavoidable concomitants of her transactions in this life For can we imagine that God will put a stop to the course of Nature and alter that order and constitution of things which bears upon it the signature and Image of his eternal Wisdome Surely it cannot be that he should frustrate the hopes and expectations of men when all things so favourably conspire to give them an energetical and vital reception into the other World And if God do not drench the Souls of men in this lake of oblivion and soporiferousness which we have all the reason in the world to believe and ought to be confident that he will not they will infallibly be instated upon their dereliction of their earthly bodies into a condition of happiness or misery which will altogether take away that fanciful dream of their sleep till the great day of judgment For although here the voice of Conscience may be drowned by the clamours of Sense and those many Diversions arising from the present state of affairs in this life yet when death shall draw aside the curtain of mortality and those various objects which so often presented themselves to our view pass away like a shadow leaving nothing to the Soul but the vast prospect of an eternal Tragedy the conscience will then awake and pierce her with an extraordinary resentment and vexation For besides that the Soul shall see all her wicked attempts and designs blasted upon Earth the memory of her name cursed and detested and become throughly apprehensive of the miscarriage and iniquity of her past life and have a full and clear sight of all her impious actions stript of their painted gloss and varnish in their proper colours and genuine circumstances besides this I say the Fame of her unrighteous demeanour will go before her into the other World and quickly be dispread over the secret regions and receptacles of Spirits by those vigilant spectators who take cognizance and give intelligence of humane affairs which cannot but afflict her even unto death to see her self abandon'd both of good Angels and the spirits of just and holy men and confined to the society of degenerate Fiends and Daemons reserved to the judg●ment of the great Day And these fiery stings and gripeings of conscience shall rage perpetually and if we can imagine any intermission it will be but like the sleeps of the wind in a storm or the broken sighs of a tempest to recover its exhausted spirits and return with a greater impetuousness and fury But to take a view of those good and holy persons whom the Father of spirits has called out of this present life who yet are in as small a probability of being overtaken by this long night as the other there wants not sufficient employment to keep them vigilant and active For whether it be that they delight in converse and society they will find those immense tracts of space not empty desarts and wildernesses but replenished with diverse sorts of Beings some equal to others more noble than themselves who all studiously endeavour to promote and carry on that great and general design of the diffusion of the Life and Nature of God over the whole Creation they may there likewise meet with many of their departed Friends and Relatives with whom they may again renew their antient leagues of friendship and entertain an amicable correspondence and familiarity or whether they be contemplative and affect a solitary retiredness and recess from the rest of the World they may there call to mind their almost obliterate Speculations and please themselves in the exertions of the innate Idea's and notions of their minds and raise within them a high sense of joy and delectation in finding out many choise Theorems of Nature and Providence besides many other advantages which are not allowed or permitted to this state So that there is no fear the Soul should sleep or cease from acting when loosened from this earthly body The resurrection of the Sonne of God from the dead is so palpable a pledge of the Soul 's living and acting after death that he must commit a rape upon his faculties and do violence to all his intellectual powers who will not be convinced by it For that he should by wicked hands be bereaved of his innocent life and so throughly slain that his malitious enemies the Jews never question his death and which further confirms the truth of it lye three dayes buried in the grave and afterward rise again and exercise the proper functions of a living man and that not for some small and inconsiderable time but conversing forty dayes with his Disciples upon Earth to take away all cause and suspicion of delusion and then ascend in the sight and presence of his Disciples and Friends to the comprehensions of that Glory which not long before his death he prayed to his Father to glorify him withall this I say is a full and convictive Demonstration even to outward sense that that dull and lethargick stupour shall never take away sense and action from our Souls when they depart from their living graves and monuments of flesh and blood And as it was with him so shall it be with us in our order measure and proportion Christ our head lives and is seated at the right hand of God in the highest glory and felicity for he there makes intercession for his Church and because he lives we his members shall live also He is a living Vine and all the members of his mystical body are living branches not only in a moral but natural and physical sense For God is not the God of the dead but of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all live unto him Now if the Souls of men fall into so permanent a sleep they are