Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	humane_a	soul_n	union_n	2,404	5	9.1201	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A51820	A sermon preach'd before the Right Honourable Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor of London, at Guild-Hall-Chappel, December 7, 1679 by Thomas Mannyngham ...	Manningham, Thomas, 1651?-1722.	1680 (1680)	Wing M502; ESTC R6536	13,854	40

wisdom of the Spleen But lo now the long-resisted notion of a Deity breaks out and kindles upon him it even haunts and persecutes his reflections 't is about his paths and about his bed and spies out all his ways If his thoughts can * Psal 139. v. 8 9 c. ascend into Heaven it is there if they go down into Hell it is there also if they take the Wings of the Morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the Sea even there they shall perceive the terrible works of the Lord and his Wonders in the Deep if peradventure darkness covers him yet behold the Lord comes riding on that Cloud and then even that darkness will be day now will his long-abused Soul grow Conscious of her own Immortality and his Minde swell with inward Argument 't will be no more accounted a vapour in the nostrils or a little spark in the moving of the heart but an eternal subject of Glory or Confusion now let him tell me if he can how ravishing the Psalms of David are beyond the Odes of Pindar or the Lunacy of Lucretius how venerable a plain Homily appears how full of Sacred Apothegm how each Paragraph contains somewhat Infinite and Immense and a Canaan distils from every Text Wherefore if now even in this his day he will be obedient to the vast infusions of his Conversion if he will constantly maintain the great Current of Repentance in its proper Channel and with all Sincerity live up to the vows of his Sickness then may he be advanced into my Second part and be numbred amongst the Righteous where Afflictions are sure to meet him again though with another face for as they are often found the best expedients to convert the obstinate from their vicious habits So Secondly They do confirm and heighten the Righteous in their course of Piety He that considers the slow progress of vertuous Habits the constant sollicitations of the World without him the continual Treacheries of his own Nature within the secret and malicious Insinuations of all the Powers of Darkness that are round him will readily confess That the frequent and most instant admonishments of Afflictions are the best Guards against Vice the surest strong Hold against all those Enemies and that the Implacable Canaanite onely defends that Land that Israel against which he fights We finde this state of Afflictions almost every where recommended by the wiser Heathens which did not proceed from any Ost●ntation of Wit was not any Rant of Stoicism but the result and sobriety of their best Reasoning and sprang from the cooler Counsels of Philosophy consonant to which we meet with a most remarkable sentence of Plato in his * Plat. 2. Repub. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Republicks whereby you would imagine that he prophetically describ'd one of our Primitive Martyrs where he says That to approve a man heartily righteous he must be scourged tortured bound have both his eyes burnt out and in the close having suffered all evils must be Impal'd or Crucify'd Neither was it the affectation of the retir'd or a melancholy Doctrine of the Cell but grew a Maxime even amidst the softnesses of Courts and gained the Suffrage of the Noble too Let one instance out of many suffice and that of Philip King of Macedon concerning whom prophane History relates that having in one day succeeded in three notable Enterprizes he immediately implored the gods that they would be so propitious to him as to expiate that immoderate prosperity with some misfortune and temper it into a draught fit for Mortality Moreover what is more remarkable 't was chiefly from this State that most of their eminent Heroes were Canoniz'd for after they had been broken and dissipated here on earth by vast Calamities then were they plac'd amongst the Stars and their mighty Souls collected into their assigned Orbs. Even the antient Patriarchs who lived before the Mosaic Institution passed away their numerous years in Sorrows and Pilgrimages mighty Judgments or Egyptian slavery And about those times according to the best conjectures of Ecclesiastical Authors the righteous Job flourished in his Afflictions and now remains to all posterity a stupendious example of Religion and Misery Besides in the establish'd oeconomy of the Jewish State which though it was so full and pregnant of the happiness of this world that its Political appearance was nothing but the promise of a Temporal prosperity yet we finde that for the most part amongst the Jews their stoutest Leaders best Kings and noblest Prophets were most severely treated with Crosses and sharp Afflictions And now if the constancy equanimity and all the gallant worth of the best of Heathens the Righteousness of the antient Patrianchs the Valour Wisdom and Integnity of the more renowned Jews have been signaliz'd and made conspicuous chiefly by their Afflictions surely Christianity which has plac'd Immortality in a fuller light which has set an exceeding glory before us to animate our Contentions in Tribulation and has given us an infallible assurance of that astonishment of Men and Angels a Crucify'd God ought in all natural reason to be productive of infinitely more illustrious effects under its severer dispensation especially if we consider that there is not a Vertue proposed to our Imitation through the whole life of our Saviour which has not for its appendage that which the Animal man calls Misery although it proves in the event the onely winging of the Soul the highest exaltation of Humane Nature which had never been honoured with the Vnion of God if it had not been in order to suffer But yet Christianity would be a strange irrational Doctrine and as eagerly derided as the Stoical Apathy if from its Principles and Duties we should endeavour to perswade men that in Afflictions and Miseries there was a sensitive pleasure or at least no sensitive regret Virtue and Piety do not charm us into to a Lethargy do not lessen the Impressions of Pain or the resentments of Injuries they rather improve them by how much the Temperate and the Intellectual are more keen and exquisite in all their perceptions than the Sensual and Debauched so that the true Christian is altogether as sensible and as conscious of the Wounds and Indignities offered to his Nature as the Voluptuous and the Revengeful but he bears them with an entire submission to the Providence Correction or Tryal of his Heavenly Father not onely without Murmurings but with Joy * 2 Cor. 7.4 exceeding Joy by reason of that Prospect that is still before him a Prospect which shews the duration of his Misery short and vanishing the Recompence of it immeasurably great and Eternal This was St. Paul's comfort in the midst of his * 2 Cor. 11. perils fightings and jeopardies of his stripes prisons and deaths when he was a Gladiator in the world in the behalf of Christ a Spectacle and * 1 Cor. 4.9 Theatre to Men and Angels Even our blessed Saviour himself