Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	action_n	body_n	part_n	4,570	5	4.8992	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28981	A free discourse against customary swearing ; and, A dissuasive from cursing by Robert Boyle ; published by John Williams.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.; Williams, John, 1636?-1709.	1695 (1695)	Wing B3978; ESTC R27221	44,234	188

of the greatness of their folly They must be thought strangely necessitous of meriting qualities that do so meanly by their bad ones implore and court men's good opinion And I know not whether be the greater their impudence to expect it for the recompence of vice or their profuseness that should squander it away on those who have no juster title to our esteem than that by which the miserablest of Beggars pretend to our Charity the multitude of their imperfections and wants Wise men will make these poor and empty projects the objects solely of their scorn and laughter and only those that want esteem for themselves will reward you with it and for such peoples praises they will but discommend you So that that empty applause you are ambitious of will either be impossible to be purchas'd or not deserve to be pursued But what your Oaths will make men take you for a Gentleman you are deceived there is too little Epicurism and Chargeableness in your vice to be affected to that Quality 'T was still so cheap and now grown so common that I wonder our Grandees though they desist not for the sins sake renounce it not at least for the Company 's Must then Vices be arguments of the possession of that dignity that Vertue is the sole true means to purchase I 'm sure it should not be so but grant it were Will you pretend to Nobility by that alone which is not the property but the vice of Gentlemen and entitle your self to that illustrious Quality by that which in God's Eye makes them unworthy if not divests them of it At that rate your pretensions would parallel his mirth who boasted a descent from the first Caesars barely upon his being like most of them almost deformedly Hawk Nos'd deriving his interest in their blood only from his sympathy with their defects For my part I must confess I am not ambitious of those badges of Gentility that Christianity delivers for the symptoms of Reprobation Nor do I find men desirous of the Gout though the Proverb have appropriated that disease to Rich men But then you think your courage will be unquestionable And indeed it may seem that you want not probability to prop up your hopes since you desperately hazard the incurring of Immortal Torments for that for which no Wise man would venture the stretching of his little Finger But since the kindred betwixt vertues is not so remote that the want of any one should conclude the possession of any other and your impiety convince us of your courage Experience teaches us That no men more fear what they should contemn than those that contemn most what they should fear And Martyrs have embrac'd those Flames with joy that impious persons durst not so much as think of without horror That boldness that men personate against their Maker were it real would not be the effect of their resolution but either of their inconsiderateness or their unbelief The wicked flee says Solomon when no man pursueth but the righteous are bold as a Lyon And indeed it is no great encouragement to despise this life to want either hope or at least confidence of a better Nor will all men so easily conclude that he that fears not to venture his Soul dares freely venture his Body For since it is not the essential worth of things but the proprietary's value of them that their dearness to us is to be measured by That standard and most mens actions will present us the soul and body in a very inverted order of precedency the greater part of men living for the Body as if they were all Body and slighting their Souls as if they had no Souls or had them but to lose It being but too true of the very greatest of those people that in themselves as in their stables the Employment of the Man is but to serve the Beast And truly he that considers that the neglect of the Soul proceeds from the former dotage on the Body will think that a very unlikely consequence that infers a readiness to hazard the latter from the carelessness of what becomes of the former He that shakes off the emboldening Fear of God betrays himself to as numerous apprehensions as did the weak-ey'd Frantick who to be secur'd from the offensiveness of the Sun 's brighter Beams by pulling out his eyes expos'd himself to all those dangers and those horrors that attend on blindness PLEA XIII But say some Swearers if I renounce this Vice my Repentance will procure me a derision I shall be asham'd of Ans Must then that Bashfulness which is both the Livery and Guard of Virtue oppose our addresses to it Like Ditches when the Draw-bridge is cut down which tho their use be to secure the Fortress from Enemies forbid access to them that once have salley'd when they are meditating a Retreat But yours is an excuse as receivable as the Whores who pretended Bashfulness for their turning honest I was much taken with an Italian Gentleman who spying a Friend of his peep out his head from behind the door of a Bordello to see if he might retire undiscover'd Come forth come forth cries he you need not be ashamed to leave that sluttish place but you should have been asham'd to have entred it Have Innocence and Vice then so chang'd natures that he that did not blush to commit sin should blush to forsake it And he that hath once fram'd mishapen Characters be ashamed afterwards to write a Neater Hand The blushes that do wait on our Repentance proceed from an implicite confession it imports of some former faultiness and so if it have been shameful to have committed a fault how much more should we be ashamed to continue and how little can it discredit us to forsake it And truly he that thinks a fault a just engagement to a relapse lest his Conversion should make him laugh'd at deserves the Censure men would pass upon that fool who having slipt one foot into a Quagmire should rather proceed to be entirely bogg'd than by timely stepping back to confess a mischance that may provoke mens laughter I had much rather men should laugh at my retracting than God frown upon my relapses and care not so much who smiles at any action that makes my Conscience do so not by way of derision but of applause How contradicting are the desires of mortals We are angry if we are not thought virtuous and yet we are ashamed to appear so and think it a just ground of quarrel to be reported the contrary of what we blush to seem Like Ladies who tho they long to live till they grow old fret to appear what they desire to be The sinner that is overmuch concerned in bad mens opinions of good mens actions does as it were swear Allegiance to the Devil and let him bore his Ear through with an Awl against the Door-Post sealing an engagement to perpetual bondage for as the same men that crucified

frequent and serious Reflections upon the Vanity and Foolishness of Swearers who live as if they meant to remove all our wonder from the Folly of our First Parents that lost Paradise for an Apple Sure that these people are not quarter'd in Bedlam where far less Frenzies have imprison'd many proceeds rather from the Multitude of the infatuated than any want of Madness in their actions But howsoever wise men build Cages for them in their opinions and in their soberer Thoughts condemn them to inhabit those Frantick Lodgings That usual expression of Scripture which sometimes puts the word Folly instead of the word Sin seems chiefly calculated for the Swearer's Vice to which it does so eminently belong and which is so uncapable of being wrong'd by the appellation But to what has been already delivered to shew how little shelter our Swearers find from all their weak Apologies as certainly the Fruitlesness and Inexcusableness of their Vice considered almost no Sinners have more to answer for and less to answer we must now add That they want not only the Temptation of an Excuse but the very Excuse of a Temptation unless its being forbidden pass for one For First this Mungrel Issue cannot as other Vices use to be be said at Nature's door we cannot father it upon Traduction since we inherit it not from our Parents nor is it born with us but learn'd by us so that here before we can be Sinners we must have been Disciples But then all other Vices have either Honour as Ambition or Profit as Avarice or Delight as Uncleanness to plead for their excuse Swearing alone can plead nothing but Guilty So that if ever that expression of the Apostle which mentions Superfluity of Naughtiness belong'd to any sin 't is certainly here to be appropriated The silly Indians that part with Gold and Jewels for Glasses Whistles and such trifling Gugaws are Solomons to Swearers Betwixt whose Madness and the fam'd folly of Lysimachus who parch'd with extreme Thirst to get a little drink became a voluntary Prisoner to his soon after vanquish'd Enemies I find no disparity advantageous to Swearers it being a less ill bargain to sell away ones Liberty for ones Belly-full of Water than to sell away ones Soul for a Mouth-full of Air. This Swearing is a Hook without a Bait And when Hell employ'd its spurious brood of Vices into the world to seduce mankind it furnish'd every one of them with a Dowry either of Fame of Pleasure or Advantage to entice Lovers with only poor Swearing was left Portionless a Mistress only for those generous and disinterested Sinners that need no Temptation but loving Wickedness as they ought to do Virtue for its own sake alone aim'd at nothing in the act of sin beyond the satisfaction of having committed it To whom the Lord may justly say as he did to the Israelites in the Prophet You have sold your selves for nought For whereas usually those Vices that rifle the Soul do bribe the Senses in swearing the poor Soul is stript of her Graces and robb'd of her Joys without the least Emolument of Pleasure or Advantage accruing to the Senses This swearing in my opinion is e'en as foolish as loving a cruel Mistress a man parts with his heart and gets nothing in exchange for it An Oath is like the Powder that charges a Granado its properties are to make a momentary displeasing noise to offend those that are within the reach of it and to spoil that from which it parts Nor is that criminal blast unlike the Prophet's description of the Cankerworm of which he gives this Character That it spoileth and fleeth away But the less advantages this Vice affords the more culpable it is the Disobedience as well as Folly of a forbidden act being increased by the want of its being beneficial he that trespasses for least transgresses most for sure 't is rather an aggravation than an excuse of having injured any body that you get nothing by it The Ambitious and the Incontinent are like great Ladies that surfeit upon Apricocks Nectarines and Melons Whereas the Swearer is but too justly resembled to those Beggars that kill themselves with Blackberries and Slows and such like Trash the Excrements of Hedges having Appetites as ridiculously noxious as those of some of our Green-sickness Girls whose Stomachs rise at Dainties and long for Loam and Charcoal For my part would I renounce my interest in Virtue it should be for the attaining of a Scepter a Fame transcending Caesars and in a word where the Happiness I forfeited should seem so recompenc'd by that I gain'd by losing it that wise men themselves should have occasion rather to compassionate my frailty than admire my weakness For I confess it would extremely trouble me to hang for my Thirteen-pence-half-penny and I am confident that many of those this senseless Vice has damn'd do find a vast accession to the Pains of Hell it self in the consideration of the Cause of their enduring them Since then Swearing is a Vice so ill qualified that you want a Temptation to it you find no Pleasure in it nor do derive any Advantage from it O let not your obstinacy to doat upon an empty fleeting sound that has nothing in it of a Sin except the Guilt hinder you from shunning Torments that will equal your Wretchedness to your Folly and from keeping up a Title unto Joys whose very Hope transcends all Earthly Happiness by opposing all your past Unnecessary Oaths by one Inviolable Promisary One Never to Swear Needlesly again Advertisement TO prevent all Mistakes that may arise from some apprehensions of mine which seeming to censure Oaths without distinction may possibly be stretch'd beyond my meaning I thought my self oblig'd to declare That in no part of this Discourse my intention was to justify that plausible Error of our Modern Anabaptists that indiscriminately condemn all Oaths as absolutely and indispensibly prohibited and abolished by the Gospel My Design being only to restrain the Needless Abuse not interdict the Necessary Use of Swearing Whose Criminousness if not in this Discourse I have represented in its most enlarged dimensions I may find an Excuse in the President and Practice of those Painters who being to draw upon the Concaves of the Roofs of Churches make their Pictures more Gigantick than the Originals they are to resemble to recompence by that advantage in the dimensions what the eye loses by the distance from the object For every Sinner naturally beholding Vice upon which he dotes through the contracting Optick of Self-love must have the Idea of his Crime enlarged beyond its true proportions to make him see it in its just quantity I might add That 't is scarce possible to paint this ugly Negro in blacker Colours than his own especially since now this Sin is grown so much in fashion that it expects not as most other Vices slow time or years to ripen it since in our very streets we hourly hear