Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	body_n	soul_n	union_n	7,440	5	9.4929	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67827	A sermon preached before His Majesty at White-Hall, 29 Decemb. 1678 by Edward Young ...	Young, Edward, 1641 or 2-1705.	1679 (1679)	Wing Y66; ESTC R34112	12,763	35

an Excuse that is They wanted proper Motives to set them on work Now a Man may be said to want proper Motives to set him about the doing of that which he knows fit to be done when he has no certain expectation of reaping such benefit by it as will recompence the difficulty and uneasiness of the doing For though God who is compleat in Happiness and can receive no addition has no other Motive of his Actions but Rectitude and Iustice yet Man who lies here under a great sense of want and moves only after Happiness can have no proper Motive of his Actions but Benefit and Advantage And therefore the Civilians distinguishing a Law into parts the Preceptive Part which enjoyns the Duty and the Distributive Part which assigns the Punishment or the Reward are pleas'd to call this later the Sanction that is the Binding Part of the Law Not but that Equity and Authority which appear in the Precept do more primarily bind but because considering Humane Reluctancy they do not bind to Effect They move our Understandings but want force to govern our Affections and therefore Punishments and Rewards are the only Effectual Arguments of our Obedience Nor does God Almighty ever address his Commands unto us but upon the same Supposition and with the same Complyance to Humane Infirmity For he never urges his Dominion over us nor the Equity of his Laws nor yet the Benefits whereby we stand actually obliged to him as sufficient Motives of our Duty but he always moves our Affections with something Future some Expectation of importance proportionable to the measure of that which he commands To serve God purely for his own sake and without any By-respects is an Heroick Notion and may be proper for the State of Heaven where his Service is accompanyed with his Vision where Sin has no more temptation nor Duty any uneasiness but to serve him so here is a more refined piece of Piety than ever yet he was pleased to exact God knows that while we carry this stubborn Clay about us Hopes and Fears are the main Springs that move our Soul and therefore he has made these as it were the measures of our Obligation Now to come to our Instance we know the Heathens were much in the dark in reference to a Future State Indeed the Poets had prettily fancied an Elysium and a Hell but the soberest Men amongst them lookt upon these rather as well-contrived restraints for the Vulgar than Matters of their own belief Vera puta c. says one of them It is good to think they are true though they be not And we see that the most Venerable amongst them for Moral Wisdom for example Socrates Tully and Seneca when they discourse expresly concerning the Immortality of the Soul want Arguments to convince themselves of the truth of it and end all their Disquisitions with a Peradventure and a Wish Now if these Men did live amiss though by the way many of them lived so well that we may be ashamed of the comparison but when they did live amiss they wanted not an Apology and such an Apology as God in proportion will admit of For St. Paul tells the Men of Athens Acts 17. 30. That till such time as God had manifested his Decree of a future Iudgment and given an Assurance of it by raising Christ Iesus from the dead till that time God had winked at their Ignorance Not their Ignorance of what they ought to do for therein their Notions were excellently good but their Ignorance of the Resurrection upon which depends all the Life of Humane Endeavors But now says the Apostle after the Revelation of this Now he commands all men every where to Repent And we shall find that God proceeded by the same measures with the Iews under their Dispensation For we cannot assign a Reason why God should at any time have given a Law so far short of the Perfection of Mans Nature and beneath the Purity of his own as that of Moses was wherein the greatest part of the Religious Service consisted in Ceremonies that affected not the Mind and wherein there were such Indulgencies in Moral Actions as Good Men were not willing to make use of but only this that God did proportion his Covenant to his Promises and required no more of them than he gave them sufficient Motives to perform The Promises that God was then pleased to make were only Temporal i. e. a happy Land and such Blessings in it as were requisite to the passing of a Comfortable Life Now these Temporal Encouragements would not Morally bear a greater stress of Duty And 't is in this Sense our Saviour tells the Iews Mark 10. 5. that Moses did indulge them in some things for the hardness of their hearts not that we may interpret that Man ever was or ever will be indulg'd purely because he is stubborn but therefore Moses indulged them for the hardness of their hearts because the straitness of his Revelation wanted proper efficacy to work their hearts to greater softness But when the Fulness of Time was come to which God designed the Fulness of his Revelation when Christ had brought Immortality to Light whose Issues depend upon a future Iudgment and when he had thereby given such a full Imploy to Humane Hopes and Fears as that nothing ought reasonably to engage them beside then was the season of extending his Commands to their just proportion of requiring all our Affections because he had given sufficient Springs to move them of demanding all we can do because he had given us sufficient Reason to do all that we can And now we come to see how these two former Excuses are voided by the Gospel The First i. e. Want of Light is voided by the Excellency of its Doctrine And the Second i. e. Want of Motives are voided by the Greatness of its Sanction First The Excuse of Want of Light is voided by the Doctrine of the Gospel for the Excellency of that Doctrine consists in this that it gives us such new Notices as make Vertue appear to have a larger Extent and a better Foundation than either the Heathens or the Iews could imagine The First Notice it brings us of this Kind is the Knowledge of our Selves and the Corruption of our Nature wherein men were never sufficiently instructed before For by the Gospel we learn that notwithstanding the dear Union and Commerce that is between Soul and Body there are no two in the World at such enmity one with another none that drive on such quite different Interests as they All our Fleshly Lusts are an Army that war against the Soul and the speediest way to ruin is to hearken to the Whisperers in our own Bosome And therefore those Acts of Self-denial which were sometimes lookt upon as Natural Imprudencies are now the most necessary Parts of Christian Duty I must curb and cross my Inclinations because to comply with my Inclinations is to put