Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	angel_n	body_n	spirit_n	8,316	5	5.4481	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63941	A funerall sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Hon[oura]ble and most vertuous Lady, the Lady Frances, Countesse of Carbery who deceased October the 9th, 1650, at her house Golden-Grove in Carmarthen-shire / by Jer. Taylor ...	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.	1650 (1650)	Wing T335; ESTC R11725	24,363	41

indeed cannot be in simple and spirituall substances of the same species or kind it must needs derive wholly from the body from its accidents circumstances from whence it follows that because the body casts fetters and restraints hindrances and impediments upon the soul that the soul is much freer in the state of separation and if it hath any act of life it is much more noble and expedite That the soul is alive after our death S. Paul affirms Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Now it were strange that we should be alive and live with Christ and yet do no act of life the body when it is asleep does many and if the soul does none the principle is less active then the instrument but if it does any act at all in separation it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding there is nothing else it can doe But this it can For it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say That the Soule can doe nothing of it self nothing without the phantasmes and provisions of the body For 1. In this life the soule hath one principle clearly separate abstracted and immateriall I mean the Spirit of grace which is a principle of life and action and in many instances does not at all communicate with matter as in the infusion superinduction and the creation of spiritual graces 2. As nutrition generation eating and drinking are actions proper to the body and its state so extasies visions raptures intuitive knowledge and consideration of its self acts of volition and reflex acts of understanding are proper to the soule 3. And therefore it is observable that S. Paul said that he knew not whether his vision and raptures were in or out of the body for by that we see his judgment of the thing that one was as likely as the other neither of them impossible or unreasonable and therefore that the soule is as capable of action alone as in conjunction 4 If in the state of blessedness there are some actions of the soule which doe not passe through the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the H. and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corne and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of materiall appetites which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and materiall representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soule in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soule so then they shall begin in the soule and pass to the body and as the operations of the soule by reason of its dependence on the body are animall naturall and materiall so in the resurrection the body shall be spirituall by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soule Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soule are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and naturall as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our soules have the same condition that Christs soule had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soule in the three daies of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therefore doe the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2 God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fit to praise him upon it shall be made spirituall to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and bee made perfect in her beeing and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumentall to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulness be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindred and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and disease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shall find

rheume Nay it is more naturall for young Men and Women to die then for old because that is more naturall which hath more naturall causes and that is more naturall which is most common but to die with age is an extreme rare thing and there are more persons carried forth to buriall before the five and thirtieth year of their age then after it And therefore let no vain confidence make you hope for long life If you have liv'd but little and are still in youth remember that now you are in your bigg'st throng of dangers both of body and soul and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration are also the proper and immediate instruments of death But if you be old you have escaped long and wonderfully and the time of your escaping is out you must not for ever think to live upon wonders or that God will work miracles to satisfie your longing follies and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world Goe home and think to die and what you would choose to be doing when you die that doe daily for you will all come to that passe to rejoice that you did so or wish that you had that will be the condition of every one of us for God regardeth no mans person Well! but all this you will think is but a sad story What we must die and go to darknesse and dishonour and we must die quickly and we must quit all our delights and all our sins or doe worse infinitely worse and this is the condition of us all from which none can be excepted every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground and be gathered up no more Is there no comfort after all this shall we go from hence and be no more seen and have no recompense Miser ô miser aiunt omnia ademit Una die infausta mihi tot praemia vitae Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffin our softer beds for the moistned and weeping turfe and our pretty children for worms and is there no allay to this huge calamity yes there is There is a yet in the text For all this yet doth God devise meanes that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Iulia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten months of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut mors ipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Iacob for all doe live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolv'd saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this Tabernacle were dissolv'd we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of all persons are with God so secur'd and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of intervall and imperfection is in respect of its certain event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdomes of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the abode of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ demo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soul is discomposed and hindred it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedome and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equall propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a staffe thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storme doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soule is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spirituall proper and proportion'd to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the object is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likeness then between men who have and as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and

it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ and then if we have done well in the body we shall never be expelled from the beatificall presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdome and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shall therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evill but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funerall Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent to follow and now that we are come to weep over the grave of our Dear Sister this rare personage we cannot chuse but have many virtues to learn many to imitate and some to exercise I chose not to declare her extraction and genealogy It was indeed fair and Honourable but having the blessing to be descended from worthy and Honoured Ancestors and her self to be adopted and ingraffed into a more Noble family yet she felt such outward appendages to be none of hers because not of her choice but the purchase of the virtues of others which although though they did ingage her to do noble things yet they would upbraid all degenerate and lesse honourable lives then were those which began and increased the honour of the families She did not love her fortune for making her noble but thought it would be a dishonour to her if she did not continue a Noblenesse and excellency of virtue fit to be owned by persons relating to such Ancestors It is fit for all us to honour the Noblenesse of a family but it is also fit for them that are Noble to despise it and to establish their honour upon the foundation of doing excellent things and suffering in good causes and despising dishonourable actions and in communicating good things to others For this is the rule in Nature Those creatures are most Honourable which have the greatest power and do the greatest good And accordingly my self have been a witnesse of it how this excellent Lady would by an act of humility and Christian abstraction strip her self of all that fair appendage of exteriour honour which decked her person and her fortune and desired to be owned by nothing but what was her own that she might onely be esteemed Honourable according to that which is the honour of a Christian and a wise person 2 She had a strict and severe education and it was one of Gods graces and favours to her For being the Heiresse of a great fortune and living amongst the throng of persons in the sight of vanities and empty temptations that is in that part of the Kingdome where greatnesse is too often expressed in great follies and great vices God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardnesses of a young spirit and a fair fortune that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be virtuous or no God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a triall or busie temptation 3 She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behind her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publike businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4 In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternall interest by turning her condition into duty and expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a virtuous prudent and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivill temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacet hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unu Naevius est and although this was a great enamell to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the virtue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he incouraged her good