Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
soul_n	body_n	death_n	separation_n	20,420	5	10.8447	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63784	A discourse of the nature, offices, and measures of friendship with rules of conducting it / written in answer to a letter from the most ingenious and vertuous M.K.P. by J.T.	Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667.; Taylor, Jeremy, 1613-1667. Two letters written to persons newly changed in their religion.	1657 (1657)	Wing T317; ESTC R27531	49,680	181

it hath the soul of friendship So that if it be asked which are most to be valued Brothers or friends the answer is very easie Brotherhood is or may be one of the kinds of friendship and from thence onely hath its value and therefore if it be compared with a greater friendship must give place But then it is not to be asked which is to be preferred a Brother or a Friend but which is the better friend Memnon or my Brother For if my Brother sayes I ought to love him best then he ought to love me best * if he does then there is a great friendship and he possibly is to be preferred if he can be that friend which he pretends to be that is if he be equally worthy but if he sayes I must love him only because he is my Brother whether he loves me or no he is ridiculous and it will be a strange relation which hath no correspondent but suppose it and adde this also that I am equally his Brother as he is mine and then he also must love me whether I love him or no and if he does not he sayes I must love him though he be my Enemy and so I must but I must not love my Enemy though he be my Brother more then I love my Friend and at last if he does love me for being his Brother I confess that this love deserves love again but then I consider that he loves me upon an incompetent reason for he that loves me only because I am his Brother loves me for that which is no worthiness and I must love him as much as that comes to and for as little reason unlesse this be added that he loves me first but whether choice and union of souls and worthiness of manners and greatness of understanding and usefulness of conversation and the benefits of Counsel and all those endearments which make our lives pleasant and our persons Dear are not better and greater reasons of love and Dearness then to be born of the same flesh I think amongst wise persons needs no great enquiry For fraternity is but a Cognation of bodies but friendship is an Union of souls which are confederated by more noble ligatures My Brother if he be no more shall have my hand to help him but unless he be my friend too he cannot challenge my heart and if his being my friend be the greater nearnesse then friend is more then Brother and I suppose no man doubts but that David lov'd Ionathan far more then he lov'd his Brother Eliab One inquiry more there may be in this affair and that is whether a friend may be more then Husband or Wife To which I answer that it can never be reasonable or just prudent or lawful but the reason is because Marriage is the Queen of friendships in which there is a communication of all that can be communicated by friendship and it being made sacred by vows and love by bodies and souls by interest and custome by religion and by laws by common counsels and common fortunes it is the principal in the kind of friendship and the measure of all the rest And there is no abatement to this consideration but that there may be some allay in this as in other lesser friendships by the incapacity of the persons if I have not chosen my friend wisely or fortunately he cannot be the correlative in the best Union but then the friend lives as the soul does after death it is in the state of separation in which the soul strangely loves the body and longs to be reunited but the body is an useless trunk and can do no ministeries to the soul which therefore prayes to have the body reformed and restored and made a brave and a fit companion So must these best friends when one is useless or unapt to the braveries of the princely friendship they must love ever and pray ever and long till the other be perfected and made fit in this case there wants only the body but the soul is still a relative and must be so for ever A Husband and a Wife are the best friends but they cannot alwayes signifie all that to each other which their friendships would as the Sun shines not upon a Valley which sends up a thick vapour to cover his face and though his beams are eternal yet the emission is intercepted by the intervening cloud But however all friendships are but parts of this a man must leave Father and Mother and cleave to his Wife that is the dearest thing in Nature is not comparable to the dearest thing of friendship and I think this is argument sufficient to prove friendship to be the greatest band in the world Adde to this that other friendships are parts of this they are marriages too less indeed then the other because they cannot must not be all that endearment which the other is yet that being the principal is the measure of the rest and are all to be honoured by like dignities and measured by the same rules and conducted by their portion of the same Laws But as friendships are Marriages of the soul and of fortunes and interests and counsels so they are brotherhoods too and I often think of the excellencies of friendships in the words of David who certainly was the best friend in the world Ecce quam bonum quam jucundum fratres habitare in unum It is good and it is pleasant that Brethren should live like friends that is they who are any wayes relative and who are any wayes sociall and confederate should also dwell in Unity and loving society for that is the meaning of the word Brother in Scripture It was my Brother Ionathan said David such Brothers contracting such friendships are the beauties of society and the pleasure of life and the festivity of minds and whatsoever can be spoken of love which is Gods eldest daughter can be said of vertuous friendships and though Carneades made an eloquent oration at Rome against justice yet never saw a Panegyrick of malice or ever read that any man was witty against friendship Indeed it is probable that some men finding themselves by the peculiarities of friendship excluded from the participation of those beauties of society which enamel and adorn the wise and the vertuous might suppose themselves to have reason to speak the evill words of envie and detraction I wonder not for all those unhappy souls which shall find heaven gates shut against them will think they have reason to murmur and blaspheme The similitude is apt enough for that is the region of friendship and love is the light of that glorious Countrey but so bright that it needs no Sun Here we have fine and bright rayes of that celestiall flame and though to all mankinde the light of it is in some measure to be extended like the treasures of light dwelling in the South yet a little do illustrate and beautifie the North yet some live under the

est excusatio si amiei causâ peccaveris said Cicero No friendship can excuse a sinne And this the braver Romans instanced in the matter of duty to their Country It is not lawful to fight on our friends part against our Prince or Country and therefore when Caius Blosius of Cuma in the sedition of Gracchus appeared against his Country when he was taken he answered that he loved Tiberius Gracchus so dearly that he thought fit to follow him whithersoever he lead and begg'd pardon upon that account They who were his Judges were so noble that though they knew it no fair excuse yet for the honour of friendship they did not directly reject his motion but put him to death because he did not follow but led on Gracchus and brought his friend into the snare For so they preserved the honours of friendship on either hand by neither suffering it to be sullied by a foul excuse nor yet rejected in any fair pretence A man may not be perjured for his friend I remember to have read in the History of the Low-countreys that Grimston and Redhead when Bergenapzoom was besieged by the Duke of Parma acted for the interest of the Queen of Englands forces a notable design but being suspected and put for their acquittance to take the Sacrament of the Altar they dissembled their persons and their interest their design and their Religion and did for the Queens service as one wittily wrote to her give not only their bodies but their souls and so deserved a reward greater then she could pay them I cannot say this is a thing greater then a friendship can require for it is not great at all but a great villany which hath no name and no order in worthy entercourses and no obligation to a friend can reach as high as our Duty to God And he that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thred that ties their hearts together it is a conspiracy but no longer friendship And when Cato lent his wife to Hortensius and Socrates lent his to a merry Greek they could not amongst wise persons obtain so much as the fame of being worthy friends neither could those great Names legitimate an unworthy action under the most plausible title It is certain that amongst friends their estates are common that is by whatsoever I can rescue my friend from calamity I am to serve him or not to call him friend and there is a great latitude in this and it is to be restrained by no prudence but when there is on the other side a great necessity neither vitious nor avoidable A man may choose whether he will or no and he does not sin in not doing it unless he have bound himself to it But certainly friendship is the greatest band in the world and if he have professed a great friendship he hath a very great obligation to do that and more and he can no wayes be disobliged but by the care of his Natural relations I said Friendship is the greatest bond in the world and I had reason for it for it is all the bands that this world hath and there is no society and there is no relation that is worthy but it is made so by the communications of friendship and by partaking some of its excellencies For friendship is a transcendent and signifies as much as Unity can mean and every consent and every pleasure and every benefit and every society is the Mother or the Daughter of friendship Some friendships are made by nature some by contract some by interest and some by souls And in proportion to these wayes of Uniting so the friendships are greater or less vertuous or natural profitable or holy or all this together Nature makes excellent friendships of which we observe something in social plants growing better in each others neighbourhood then where they stand singly And in animals it is more notorious whose friendships extend so far as to herd and dwell together to play and feed to defend and fight for one another and to cry in absence and to rejoyce in one anothers presence But these friendships have other names less noble they are sympathy or they are instinct But if to this natural friendship there be reason superadded something will come in upon the stock of reason which will enoble it but because no Rivers can rise higher then Fountains reason shall draw out all the dispositions which are in Nature and establish them into friendships but they cannot surmount the communications of Nature Nature can make no friendships greater then her own excellencies Nature is the way of contracting necessary friendships that is by nature such friendships are contracted without which we cannot live and be educated or be well or be at all In this scene that of Parents and Children is the greatest which indeed is begun in nature but is actuated by society and mutual endearments For Parents love their Children because they love themselves Children being but like emissions of water symbolical or indeed the same with the fountain and they in their posterity see the images and instrument of a civil immortality but if Parents and Children do not live together we see their friendships and their loves are much abated and supported only by fame and duty by customes and religion which to nature are but artificial pillars and make this friendship to be complicated and to pass from its own kind to another That of Children to their Parents is not properly friendship but gratitude and interest and religion and what ever can supervene of the nature of friendship comes in upon another account upon society and worthiness and choice This relation on either hand makes great Dearnesses But it hath special and proper significations of it and there is a special duty incumbent on each other respectively This friendship and social relation is not equal and there is too much authority on one side and too much fear on the other to make equal friendships and therefore although this is one of the kindes of friendship that is of a social and relative love and conversation yet in the more proper use of the word Friendship does doe some things which Father and Son do not I instance in the free and open communicating counsels and the evenness and pleasantnesse of conversation and consequently the significations of the paternal and filial love as they are divers in themselves and Unequal and therefore another kinde of friendship then we mean in our inquiry so they are such a duty which no other friendship can annul because their mutual duty is bound upon them by religion long before any other friendships can be contracted and therefore having first possession must abide for ever The duty and love to Parents must not yeeld to religion much less to any new friendships and our Parents are to be preferred before the Corban and are at no hand to be laid aside but when they engage against God That is in