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
A67468	The life of John Donne, Dr. in divinity, and late dean of Saint Pauls Church London	Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.	1658 (1658)	Wing W668; ESTC R17794	42,451	172

we partake so both earth and heaven for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy so our souls demerged into those bodies are allowed to partake earthly pleasure Our soul is not sent hither onely to go back again we have some errand to do here nor is it sent into prison because it comes innocent and he which sent it is just As we may not kill our selves so we may not bury our selves which is done or indangered in a dull Monastick sadness which is so much worse then jollity for upon that word I durst And certainly despair is infinitely worse then presumption both because this is an excesse of love that of fear and because this is up that down the hill easier and more stumbling Heaven is expressed by singing hell by weeping And though our blessed Saviour be never noted to have laughed yet his countenance is said ever to be smiling And that even moderate mirth of heart and face and all I wish to my self and perswade you to keep This alacrity is not had by a generall charity and equanimity to all mankind for that is to seek fruit in a wildernesse nor from a singular friend for that is to fetch it out of your own pocket but the various and abundant grace of it is good company in which no rank no number no quality but ill and such a degree of that as may corrupt and poyson the good is exempt For in nearer then them your friend and somewhat nearer then he in your self you must allow some inordinatenesse of affections and passions For it is not true that they are not naturall but stormes and tempests of our bloud and humours for they are naturall but sickly And as the Indian priests expressed an excellent charity by building Hospitalls and providing chirurgery for birds and beasts lamed by mischance or age or labour so must we not cut off but cure these affections which are the bestiall part To Sir H. Goodere SIR EVery Tuesday I make account that I turn a great hour-glass and consider that a weeks life is run out since I writ But if I ask my self what I have done in the last watch or would do in the next I can say nothing if I say that I have passed it without hurting any so may the Spider in my window The primitive Monkes were excusable in their retirings and enclosures of themselves for even of them every one cultivated his own garden and orchard that is his soul and body by meditation and manufactures and they ought the world no more since they consumed none of her sweetnesse nor begot others to burden her But for me if I were able to husband all my time so thriftily as not onely not to wound my soul in any minute by actuall sin but not to rob and couzen her by giving any part to pleasure or businesse but bestow it all upon her in meditation yet even in that I should wound her more and contract another guiltinesse As the Eagle were very unnaturall if because she is able to do it she should pearch a whole day upon a tree staring in contemplation of the majesty and glory of the Sun and let her young Eglets starve in the nest Two of the most precious things which God hath afforded us here for the agony and exercise of our sense and spirit which are a thirst and inhiation after the next life and a frequency of prayer and meditation in this are often envenomed and putrefied and stray into a corrupt disease for as God doth thus occasion and positively concurre to evil that when a man is purposed to do a great sin God infuses some good thoughts which make him choose a lesse sin or leave out some circumstance which aggravated that so the devil doth not onely suffer but provoke us to some things naturally good upon condition that we shall omit some other more necessary and more obligatory And this is his greatest subtilty because herein we have the deceitfull comfort of having done well and can very hardly spie our errour because it is but an insensible omission and no accusing act With the first of these I have often suspected my self to be overtaken which is with a desire of the next life which though I know it is not meerly out of a wearinesse of this because I had the same desires when I went with the tyde and enjoyed fairer hopes then now yet I doubt worldly encumbrances have increased it I would not that death should take me asleep I would not have him meerly seise me and onely declare me to be dead but win me and overcome me When I must shipwrack I would do it in a Sea where mine impotency might have some excuse not in a sullen weedy lake where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming Therefore I would fain do something but that I cannot tell what is no wonder For to choose is to do but to be no part of any body is to be nothing At most the greatest persons are but greatwens and excrescences men of wit and delighfull conversation but as moles for ornament except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole This I made account that I begun early when I understood the study of our laws but was diverted by the worst voluptuousnesse which is an Hydroptique immoderate desire of humane learning and languages beautifull ornaments to great fortunes but mine needed an occupation and a course which I thought I entred well into when I submitted my self into such a service as I thought might imploy those poor advantages which I had And there I stumbled too yet I would try again for to this hour I am nothing or so little that I am scarce subject and argument good enough for one of mine own letters yet I fear that doth not ever proceed from a good root that I am so well content to be lesse that is dead You Sir are far enough from these descents your vertue keeps you secure and your naturall disposition to mirth will preserve you but lose none of these holds a slip is often as dangerous as a bruise and though you cannot fall to my lowness yet in a much lesse distraction you may meet my sadness for he is no safer which falls from an high Tower into the leads then he which falls from thence to the ground make therefore to your self some mark and go towards it alegrement Though I be in such a planetary and erratick fortune that I can doe nothing constantly yet you may finde some constancy in my constant advising you to it Your hearty true friend J. Donne I came this evening from M. Jones his house in Essex where M. Martin hath been and left a relation of Captain Whitcocks death perchance it is no news to you but it was to me without doubt want broke him for when M. Hollands Company by reason of the plague

of others many persons of Nobility and of eminency for Learning who did love and honour him in his life did shew it at his death by a voluntary and sad attendance of his body to the grave where nothing was so remarkable as a publick sorrow To which place of his Buriall some mournful Friend repaired and as Alexander the Great did to the grave of the famous Achilles so they strewed his with an abundance of curious and costly Flowers which course they who were never yet known continued morning and evening for many dayes not ceasing till the stones that were taken up in that Church to give his body admission into the cold earth now his bed of rest were again by the Masons art levelled and firmed as they had been formerly and his place of buriall undistinguishable to common view Nor was this all the Honour done to his reverend Ashes for as there be some persons that will not receive a reward for that for which God accounts himself a debter persons that dare trust God with their Charity and without a witness so there was by some gratefull unknowne friend that thought Dr. Donne's memory ought to be perpetuated an hundred Marks sent to his two faithfull Friends * and Executors towards the making of his Monument It was not for many years known by whom but after the death of Dr. Fox it was known that he sent it and he lived to see as lively a representation of his dead friend as Marble can express a Statue indeed so like Dr. Donne that as his friend Sir Henry Wotton hath expressed himself it seems to breath faintly and Posterity shall look upon it as a kind of artificiall Miracle He was of Stature moderately tall of a straight and equally-proportioned body to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of Comelinesse The melancholy and pleasant humor were in him so contempered that each gave advantage to the other and made his Company one of the delights of mankind His fancy was unimitably high equalled onely by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear knowing soul and of a Conscience at peace with it self His melting eye shewed that he had a soft heart full of noble compassion of too brave a soul to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others He did much contemplate especially after he entred into his Sacred Calling the mercies of Almighty God the immortality of the soul and the joyes of Heaven and would often say Blessed be God that he is God divinely like himself He was by nature highly passionate but more apt to reluct at the excesses of it A great lover of the offices of humanity and of so mercifull a spirit that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief He was earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied and imployed in a continued praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the Holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it reinanimated J. W. To all my friends Sir H. Goodere SIR I Am not weary of writing it is the course but durable garment of my love but I am weary of wanting you I have a mind like those bodies which have hot Livers and cold stomachs or such a distemper as travelled me at Paris a Fever and dysentery in which that which is physick to one infirmity nourishes the other So I abhor nothing more then sadnesse except the ordinary remedy change of company I can allow my self to be Animal sociale appliable to my company but not gregale to herd my self in every troup It is not perfectly true which a very subtil yet very deep wit Averroes says that all mankind hath but one soul which informs and rules us all as one Intelligence doth the firmament and all the Stars in it as though a particular body were too little an organ for a soul to play upon And it is as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense I dare not say to reason though it have appearance of that too because none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is reasonablest That all mankind hath one protecting Angel all Christians one other all English one other all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation or society one other and every man one other Though both these opinions expresse a truth which is that mankind hath very strong bounds to cohabit and concurre in other then mountains and hills during his life First common and mutuall necessity of one another and therefore naturally in our defence and subventions we first fly to our selves next to that which is likest other men Then naturall and inborn charity beginning at home which perswades us to give that we may receive and legall charity which makes us also forgive Then an ingraffing in one another and growing together by a custome of society and last of all strict friendship in which band men were so presumed to be coupled that our Confessor King had a law that if a man be killed the murderer shall pay a summe felago suo which the interpreters call fide ligato comiti vitae All these bands I willingly receive for no man is less of himself then I nor any man enough of himself To be so is all one with omnipotence And it is well marked that in the holy Book wheresoever they have rendred Almighty the word is Self-sufficient I think sometimes that the having a family should remove me far from the curse of Vaesoli But in so strict obligation of Parent or Husband or Master and perchance it is so in the last degree of friendship where all are made one I am not the lesse alone for being in the midst of them Therefore this oleum laetitiae this balme of our lives this alacrity which dignifies even our service to God this gallant enemy of dejection and sadnesse for which and wickednesse the Italian allows but one word Triste And in full condemnation whereof it was prophesied of our blessed Saviour Non erit tristis in his conversation must be sought and preserved diligently And since it grows without us we must be sure to gather it from the right tree They which place this alacrity onely in a good conscience deal somewhat too roundly with us for when we ask the way they shew us the town afar off Will a Physician consulted for health and strength bid you have good sinews and equal temper It is true that this conscience is the resultance of all other particular actions it is our triumph and banquet in the haven but I would come towards that also as Mariners say with a merry wind Our nature is Meteorique we respect because