Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	abundance_n	speak_v	tongue_n	2,464	5	7.4469	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27966	The Bachelor's directory being a treatise of the excellence of marriage, of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it : together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men.		1696 (1696)	Wing B261; ESTC R40746	88,169	301

there are but few now a days like Job who made a contract with his eyes not to look upon a Virgin One sees every where lascivious eyes The Publick walks serve only to exercise their immodesty They respect not even the Altars of the Lord and the Assemblies of his People If a man discovers a Lady there of a well made agreeable aspect he willingly prefers the pleasure of observing her to that of discharging the duties of Piety There needs no more to freeze the hottest devotion Homo ex humo sine humanitate non est homo Man is made out of the earth nor is a man without humanity By the lust of the mouth I apprehend those filthy Words and Songs so unbecoming and lascivious that hurt chst ears that excite the reddest modesty and whereof the use notwithstanding is so frequent amongst men This is certainly a species of fornication as well by the pleasure that is taken in uttering these obscenities as because they are the inkindlers of concupisence and contribute much to the corrupting of the affections One may even be assured without fear of a mistake that those who are pleafed with such kind of discourses are already very much corrupted in their hearts In effect the mouth speaks only from the abundance of the heart as Christ himself One is the interpreter of the other The mouth speaks ill because the heart thinks ill The effect pursues the nature of its cause and such as the principle is such also is the act Ream linguam non facit nisi mens rea We may even affirm that these lascivious tongues are almost an infallible proof of a licentious life for as St. Chrisostom says Verbae sint signa eorum Words are the images or representation of things The words of men very often give us to understand what they are There is very little appearance that a man will not act as he loves to talk and that being immodest in his conversation he should not be so in his conduct If in the morality of our Saviour one must give an account of useless words which are neither good nor evil Judge Sir what a reckoning those will have who make these impure and hurtful words a subject of diversion and who have contracted so large a habit of them that they cannot express themselves whether in speaking or in writing without naming every thing by its name As the Plautus's the Horaces's the Ovia's of the time past the Rebalai's and the Montaign's of our time It must be confessed that nothing is more unworthy of a Gentleman than this manner of action Modesty is the thing of the world most agreeable to Man but especially essential to a Christian It is a character that denotes him from all the rest What was more carefully and earnestly recommended to us by the Apostles than a purity and sanctity in all our conversation In fine what shall I say of the excesses of the hand with relation to this miserable sin of wantonness O God what abominations what obscenities what unlawful uses what infamous things which one durst not either think or relate doth it not commit This crime which modesty will not suffer to be named as common as it is is ne'er the less enormous It was long since struck with the curse of Heaven in the person of Onan Gen. 38.9 Son of Judah whereof the Scripture tells us Is it a wonder after all this that God should have so much horror for this crime Is it any surprise that he should thunder against it such dreadful menaces It is matter of consternation that he should join to it an heriditary curse upon families In a word that he should so often bring upon the people and upon private persons such terrible marks of his displeasure It must be granted that nothing is more frequent in Holy Scripture than prohibitions to commit this Sin and the examples of its punishment It is not in the Decalogue alone that God says Thou shalt not commit Adultery He speaks it in a thousand other places of his word The New Testament especially recommends to us nothing else The Sermons of our Saviour and the Epistles of the Apostles are filled therewith Their principal end is to dispose us to a purity of body and mind and they protest that nothing is more displeasing to God than the polluted Garment of the flesh It is not Sodom and Gomarrha alone that has drawn down the fire of Heaven Alas a thousand other Cities and an infinite number of other sinners have been consumed in all Ages and all Nations upon account of this unhappy Lust But admit there was nothing else except the punishments of another life and that hideous Lake of Fire and Brimstone to which in the Theology of Jesus Christ and his Apostles it necessarily leads men needs there any more to convince us that nothing is more pernicious and ought to be more soveraignly hated by us Is it not strange perhaps you 'll say that God who knows Man so well should with so much exactness prohibit a thing which is so natural to him and that he should condemn him to the punishments of Hell for a Sin which it is almost impossible for him not to commit in one of those kinds you have treated of doth not St. Paul say That the flesh is not subject to the Law of God Rom. 8.7 neither can it be I reply Sir that this great propensity it self which Man naturally has for this debauchery is one of the principal reasons that have oblig'd the Creator to joyn so much punishment to it and to thunder so many Curses upon it If inspite of his prohibition and all his threatnings Man is insolent enough to abandon himself to it as much as he doth judge to what excess he hath pushed on the crime and what he had been able to attempt without it Et nihil est Ovid. Met. L. 6. Fab 8. quod non effraeno captus amore Ausit It is then to abate a little the impetuosity of this furious passion that God has used him so He has been pleased to punish with most bitterness and severity the vice where Man finds most pleasure and for which he has most inclination to the end that the fear of so formidable a chastisement might be as a Bridle to retain him in his duty There are few of those persons left of whom one might affirm Oderunt peccare bonae virtutis amore Hor. Epist L. 1. They hate to sin for the pure love of virtue Most frequently we love this virtue not for its own sake but by reason of the punishments that attend vice Difficile est persuadere hominibus honestum propter seipsum diligendum Cic. 'T is a difficult thing to persuade men that virtue is to be lov'd for its own sake If there was no good to hope for in practising the one and no evil to fear in committing the other we should become as wicked as the