Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	person_n	spirit_n	union_n	3,047	5	9.7455	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

on the Soul when departed from her decayed tenement and convey her to that place and society which the rectitude or obliquity of her moral Nature hath fitted her for There are two opposite Principles or contrary Natures in the World between which there is an eternall and irreconcilable Feud viz. Sin Righteousness to one of which every man ioyns himself and becomes a member of a society or body Politick and carries on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an immortal warr Sin is nothing but a deflection from the divine Nature a transposition or undue connexion and dis-harmonious union of some principles in the Creation which raises a perturbation and disorder in the Soul of man and when confirmed by repeated acts becomes a habit and incrassates obnubilates the mind crowding it into narrowness and servility But righteousness is a concord or agreement and suitableness with those living laws impressed upon every moral agent when the Soul acts adequately and conformably to those innate notions of truth and holiness and this enlarges and sets free the Spirit of man from Tyranny and slavery And hence it comes to pass that the actions of men are not as the transient effects of necessary causes as a stone to fall downwards but being the results of spontaneous principles have a moral influence of good or evil upon their future states and conditions For men arrive not to the utmost degrees and completion of goodness or iniquity in a moment but as in Naturals so likewise Morals there is a latitude required and things ascend gradually to their perfections and consequently the wicked or righteous Nature respectively dispreads it self and incorporates and conjoyns the Soul either with Hell or Heaven in this life For Hell in a moral sense is nothing but an Orbe of sin and unrighteousness a state of penury anxiety and sucks in and draws as it were with hidden cords and strings every thing that is like to it self so that every wicked man truly carries the beginnings of Hell and mi●ery within his breast and to this purpose is that of Porphyry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Spirit is said to be in Hades because it partakes of the dark nature and void of light But Heaven is the region of serenity and quiet a state of righteou●ness peace and joy and takes hold of every thing congenerous to its own Nature elevating and winding the spirits of men off from their commerce with vice and the alluring objects of sense and transforming them into it's own beauteous Image and pulchritude and the further they recede from the Cuspis of the love of wickedness and the unrighteous Nature the more liberty they find and when once they are so farr risen that the utmost projections of this dark shadow cannot touch them then are they arrived to an eternal and boundless freedom Every man therefore so fatally adjoyning himself either to Heaven or Hell in this life it will inevitably fall to his share to be happy or miserable when departed out of it which cannot be except the Memory and Sense of his past actions return upon his separation from the body And that it does so is not only a probable but necessary consequence from the Nature of the Soul For Memory being a radicated faculty of the Soul and having no greater dependance upon the body than all other exertions and operations of the mind whatsoever it will remain safe and entire notwithstanding the various turnings and transmutations of corporeal principles Indeed were Memory and those other Faculties which not without great reason we attribute to a knowing and intelligent Principle the sole effects of the re-action or tremulous motions of certain pieces of matter striking upon each other it were a necessary deduction from thence that Death should spoil their sport and quite deface and obliterate whatever their nimble friskings and incertain agitations might represent unto us but this is already sufficiently demonstrated to our hands to be both frivolous and precarious by an excellent Person who has divested Matter of all cogitative powers and properties And if we well weigh the state of the Soul after death it will appear that Memory will then be more vivid and lively and Conscience which is nothing but a reflexe act of Memory more sensible and awakened For the great cause of all our weak and imperfect actions in this life is the stubbornness and inobsequiousness of matter to the powers of the Soul whereby they become dull languishing and inactive but when death shall give us entrance into another World and the Soul united to a more ductil and pliable vehicle her operations will become more sprightly and the Memory bring into view many and diverse things which before it was not able to command the Conscience afflict or cheer according to her deportment in the former life Neither is this any more than what we find already in the natures and causes of things For if Memory being lost by the violence of a disease or some other extraordinary indisposition of the body yet returns and is regained upon the cessation and amotion of the distemper and reduction of the spirits to their pristine temperament I see no reason why it should thus totally be despoiled by Death there being oft-times a greater change and perturbation in some malignant diseases than we see happen to sound and healthy persons whom the casualties of Warr or other sudden Fate hath brought to an untimely end This only difference is assigned which yet when severely examined carries no great moment with it that when Nature or Art hath expelled the morbifick matter and restored the body to a healthfull vigour and the spirits depurated and rectified from their vitiosity become accommodate instruments for the operations of the Soul her vital union with matter continues which in Death say they is totally lost and dissolved and how the Soul unbared from all commerce with matter can be capable of acting seems utterly unintelligible Whether therefore the Soul does or does not act without the help of matter when her garments of mortality are laid aside is not my present purpose to discuss Only I shall cast in this by the way that no man can be demonstratively certain that the Soul cannot act without the assistance of matter but if he remind himself of that intimate dependance the Soul hath upon matter in this life even in her sublimest exercises for I omit here the power of moving the body which is likewise performed by the motion of matter directed according to the will and pleasure of the Soul as also her sympathy with the mutations and alterations of the Air whereby the mind becomes more elevate and serene or cloudy and dull and those infinite varieties likewise which a man may observe in his own temper and constitution not to instance in any other but those of an extraordinary joy and cheerfulness of spirit at sometimes and at others as great a pensiveness and melancholy of which a

to the other Principle according as the strength of Natural corruption or the auxiliaries of Reason prevail upon him he must conclude I say that such Persons as these dying cannot be immediately rewarded with the Bliss and Glories of Heaven because they have not as yet performed the condition upon which that Felicity is entail'd which is to be changed and renewed in the spirit of their minds to be purified throughout and become holy as God is Holy partaking of his Nature and becoming in all things conformable to the Holy Jesus as to a perfect and compleat Copy of all Virtue and Righteousness Nor will the Goodness of Almighty God whose Spirit is alwayes taking hold of every heart that retains any capacities and dispositions for the reception of it's own Nature frustrate such auspicious beginnings but rather cherish and fold them like a tender mother in it's loving arms till it bring them to that due perfection which alone can render them the proper subjects of Immortality and Life It will follow then that such as these and such are the greatest part of mankind are fit and adequate objects of our Prayers Nor can the small and only conjectural knowledg which we have of the state of separate Souls make us ever a whit the more remiss in performing these exercises which are the only ones we can shew of love and charity to our departed friends if we remind our selves of what I before hinted and shall now further prosecute viz. That the unfallen Angels and the Spirits of good and holy men departed this life and all just persons upon Earth who are daily breathing after and aspiring to the highest pitch of a Christian life are one Polity Society or Corporation which reacheth from that Blessed and Glorious Seat of Majesty which we more eminently call Heaven to this Globe of earth whereon we live so that all those intermundane Spaces are replenished with several ranks and orders of invisible Agents who are as the benign-eyes of God beholding the administration of the affairs of the Earth and protecting the sincere lovers of truth from the tyranny and invasion of the Airy Principality and there is no need we should fancy them beyond the Stars when they have quitted their bodies where all that they can do if haply they can attain so much is to be compassionate Spectators of our Calamities being unable to afford the least relief or succour but look upon them as not farr distant from us where they may not only behold the several transactions of men but really assist and abette their innocent and pious attempts after the divine life and Nature And the more good and purified they are from the contagion of mortal concretions the more compassionate and benign Inspectors will they be of humane affairs and more concerned in their behalf for their advantage and welfare Having thus farr discoursed from the reason of the thing it self I may cast in the suffrage of the antient Fathers of the Church to let you see the Sense of Antiquity that prayers for the dead were in use even in the early dawning as it were of Christianity Tertullian de Corona Militis hath these Words Oblationes pro defunctis pro natalitiis annua die facimus And in his Book de Monogamia Pro anima ejus nempe mariti oret refrigerium interim adpostulet ei in prima Resurrectione consortium offerat annuis diebus dormitionis ejus Damascen Orat. defunctis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 See likewise Dionys Areopag de Ecclesiast Hierarch mihi pag. 147 148. Saint Austin likewise in the ninth Book of his Confessions chap. 12. and 13. sets down at large the prayers he made for his mother Monica and her husband Patricius And if any yet desire further Testimony let them consult the antient Liturgies of the Church where are set down particular Forms of Prayer for the dead for such I mean who deceased in the Communion of the Church Nec ullus invenitur sayes the learned Grotius alicujus authoritatis Scriptor qui ei mori contradixerit St. Chrysostome likewise in Homil. ad Pop. Antiochen ad Hom. 3. in Epist ad Philipp as he is cited by Cassander in his Consultat p. 239. affirms that this Form qua Ecclesia omnibus suis membris in Christo quiescentibus locum refrigerii quietis pacis postulat was of Apostolical institution And although sayes he p. 240 it were not agreed upon by all In what state the Soul was after her departure from the body Omnes tamen hoc officium ut testimonium charitatis erga defunctum ut professionem fidei de immortalitate Animarum futura Resurrectione Deo gratum Ecclesiae utile esse judicarunt Adde to this which in such a case as this may have it's weight that our blessed Saviour coming into the World to amend and correct the manners of mankind and to introduce a Religion which should be Universal over the whole world did as it were on purpose to gratifie both Jews and Heathens as well retain whatever was good and laudable in either of their Religions as expunge whatever was useless or of a bad consequence and yet we never find either in the History of the Gospels or in any credible Author that ever he reprehended that custome of praying for the Dead which was in use even at his coming into the world as the antient Talmudick Form composed as it 's thought by the Jews in their Babylonian captivity and that Apochryphal Writer of the second Book of Macchab. chap 12. sufficiently testifie And Calvin himselfe Instit 3. c. 5. confesses that Prayer for the dead was in use above a Thousand three Hundred years ago Those two places Ecclesiast chap. 11. v. 3 and Apocalyps chap. 14.13 some make use of to prove that Men immediately upon the dissolution of their Souls from their bodies go immediately either to Heaven or Hell and therefore our prayers are impertinent because their state whatever it be is fixed and irreversible belong little to that purpose As for the first the words of which are these If the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth and if the Tree fall toward the South or toward the North in the place where the Tree falleth there it shall be it hath no relation to this purpose but properly belongs to the case of Charity as Castellio hath noted Dum abundas largire Mortuus largiri non poteris ut lapsa arbor jam nequit in quam velit partem ferri The other likewise as little promotes their Design if we look well into the words which are these Blessed are the dead which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them which verse must have a connexion with the precedent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Here is the patience of the Saints namely in holding constantly the profession of the faith in the midst of those Persecutions which should shortly come upon them upon which occasion the Spirit of God accounts them happy who die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quickly for they hear no more the voice of the oppressor but are taken away from the evil to come and rest from their labours that is are freed from troubles and persecutions for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies A like speech is that Eccles 4. upon mention of the oppressors and the no comforter it followes v. 2. Wherefore I praised the dead that are already dead Thus Sir I have at last finished that Task you imposed upon me in the performance of which I shall esteem my self infinitely gratified if by it you will please to account me Sir Yours c. June 25. 1665. FINIS Argum. 1. Argum. 2. Argum. 3. 11. Cor. v. Argum. 1. Arg. 2. These verses not extant in our vulgar books * Act ● 59 2 Tim. 1.12 Lib. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sect. 42. * Eorum sententiam sic exprimit nobis Strabo lib. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. insignem de hac eorum sententia locum apud Porphyr lib. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sect. ●8