Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	aaron_n	body_n	mystical_a	44	3	9.8964	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57623	Reliquiæ Raleighanæ being discourses and sermons on several subjects / by the Reverend Dr. Walter Raleigh.	Raleigh, Walter, 1586-1646.	1679 (1679)	Wing R192; ESTC R29256	281,095	422

memorable and exemplary couple I may well join them in my speech they were so many ways joined in themselves They were joined in affinity and alliance they were joined in affection and love they were joined in the quality and nature of their Disease and would not be severed till death did it in the time of their sickness they were joined in the comforts of death and now they are joined in the glory of an everlasting life But the formers rites are passed yet they might not be now passed over I cannot but give her a touch she desired it from me and I am sure she deserved it For the latter here now in your sight I shall not speak much because I can hardly speak enough with her former times I have had no acquaintance and therefore can make no relation of it only I assure my self that she who was so patient and penitent in her sickness so devout and cheerful in her death could not but be well and religiously disposed in the course of her life But for the latter part of her days them I have known and in them been an eye-witness of the expression of more goodness than I have often seen or from a Woman of her quality could have expected The things of note which I especially observed in her and shall commend unto you are principally these her willingness to entertain death and her deadness unto the world and worldly affairs her joy in spiritual discourses and her frequency and fervency in devout prayer For the first if we consider the impediments it was much she should do it so cheerfully she was but young and entring upon the prime of her years She had small and tender Infants of her own that went near her she was well bestowed where she found both youth and love and means too wanted nothing nor was likely to want haec sunt quae faciunt homines invitos mori and these are the things that make Men unwilling to die could the Philosopher say Yet notwithstanding all these she gently submitted her self unto it she resolutely went forth to meet it and lest he should miss her she call'd it unto her Come gentle death and even held forth her arms to receive and embrace it For the second I was with her often yet never heard a word of worldly matter or secular affair so much as fall from her tongue Her heart was bent on Heaven which made it delight so much in heavenly contemplations they came down upon her as the Scripture speaks like rain into a fleece of wooll and as a shower upon a thirsty land With what an open and greedy ear did she suck in celestial comforts which she shortly after vented out again in devout supplications wherein the mercy of the Lord did not forsake her even to the last gasp And then at last when her hands forsook her tongue and her tongue had almost forsaken her heart yet her heart did still adhere unto God in uncessant prayer and therefore she intreated others to hold her fainting hands that her tongue failing they at least might testify that her Soul did commune with her Maker It calls to mind the story of Moses having Aaron and Hur to support his arms for whilst he prayed Amalek fled and Joshua conquered Sure I am whilst she did in like manner the true Joshua conquered all the spiritual Amalekites and enemies of her Soul who only could batter down the prison of her body that her spirit being loose and at liberty might freely clear the air and mount up to the desired place of everlasting rest where she now is and where may she still in peace remain till another day shall invest both Body and Soul with unspeakable glory Who can now mourn who can weep for such a Soul if ye do they must be tears of joy not of sorrow at least they must be for your selves not for her You may bewail your own loss you cannot grieve at her death unless you envy her happiness foelix iss a anima imitationem desiderat non planctum that happy Soul is no subject of sorrow but a pattern of imitation And therefore I now leave the dead and conclude to the living that their Spirits may live in death as hers hath shown them the example For this should be the chief endeavour this should be the principal care of a Christian in his whole life that when his life shall end yet the life of his Soul may not end with the death of his body It little matters how it fares with us in the rest of our time so it go well with us here when if wrath overtake us it shall eleave unto us for ever but if peace end our days our days afterwards of peace shall never end For as the tree falleth there it shall lie Wretched Men that can willingly think of any thing save this that infinitely concerns them above all things else that can wish with Balaam let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his but never endeavour themselves in the works of righteousness whereby they may procure it as if they might be like them in their death whom they refused to imitate in their actions But they may wish like Solomons fool till their tongue cleave to their gums for so long as they live the life of Balaam loving the wages of iniquity they shall never die the death of the righteous nor have their last end like his whom they are nothing like in conversation No if the Soul then live it must be as my Text hath it for righteousness sake Set thy self therefore to it seriously and speedily Wise Princes make many days preparation for a field that must be fought in one Beloved let us be wise too and lay up something every day for the last when we shall wrestle with death If we win that skirmish we have enough but where or when or how soon we shall be called to the conflict who can tell be not secure therefore and presume not on the last hour it may come suddenly upon thee flatter not thy self and thy sins and frame not delay unto thine own Soul Send not Religion before thee unto thine old age whither peradventure thou shalt never come or else come hardned through the deceitfulness of sin Give not thy youth and strength unto Satan and then when thou art low drawn and upon the lees think to present God with the dregs of thy life What a folly were it for thee to adventure thy surest thy everlasting weal or wo making or marring on so sandy and sinking a foundation how much better were it for thee to remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth before the evil day come and thou say I have no delight herein that thy Creator may not forget thee in thine old age when strength faileth and Man returneth to his long home Sure in these great water-floods we shall hardly come nigh him and therefore let

demonstration of the intrinsick goodness that is holiness of the Lord that vouchsafed it For if the detestation of evil be an argument of goodness how full of goodness is he who that we might know how utterly he hates and abhors all sin and wickeness rather than it should escape unrevenged would incarnate the Divinity it self that so he might punish it and severely too even in his own Son which doth not only manifest his goodness but his Justice also and together with both the greatness and grievousness of our sins How far were our Souls gone and how deadly our Iniquities that must either draw God from Heaven yea dragg him to the Cross or plunge us in an everlasting Hell And unto that our blessed Lord vouchsafed to be brought that we might be delivered from this Who then shall declare either the heinous guilt of our sin or the infinite power the manifest wisdom or infinite both goodness and justice declared in his generations Especially his goodness unto us miserable sinners which we must ever especially think on but never hope to utter O what mind what speech shall utter say or conceive the great honour he hath this day done unto our nature how many and marvellous benefits he hath in it confer'd on our persons freeing us from all that is evil sin sorrow death and Hell and investing us with whatsoever is good Grace Joy and Glory everlasting in Heaven Say we then all with Pelergus Age O Christe Dei Verbum Sapientia Well then O dear Jesus the word and wisdom of the Father what shall we poor miserable Creatures return unto thee for all thy favours Tuae enim omnia à nobis nihil cupis nisi salvari for thou hast done all things for us and requirest nothing of us again but that we would suffer our selves to be saved nay thou givest us salvation and takest it kindly at our hands yea as a benefit unto thy self if we will but receive it O infinite goodness and that we may laud and praise and worship thee worthily for it add one more mercy unto all that is past and as thou wast pleased to be born in our nature so vouchsafe to be born again by thy holy Spirit in our Persons that we may once more say Quis enarrabit c. So we pass unto our last point from his Divine birth of the Father and his Humane from the womb of the blessed Virgin unto his spiritual in the Souls of all the faithful For it is not enough that the Son of God was born for us or in our nature unless he be also born within ●us and in our particular spirits by his grace that so as he was made the Son of Man by being united unto our flesh we might become the Sons of God by being united again unto him in the spirit By wihch spiritual union and mystical are conveyed and applyed unto us all the benefits and graces purchased by the personal And it is not the meriting of Mercy but the actual conferring of it that must do us good which is never fully done until he that was born for us be reborn again in and within us till he live in our hearts by Faith and his life revive in our conversation till his patience be stamped upon our Spirits and the rest of his Divine Vertues ingraven and formed on our Souls For so speaks St. Paul of this Spiritual Generation My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you Gal. iv 19. And formed then he is in us not before when we can shape and form our hearts in some good measure according to the pattern and precedent he hath left us truly saying with the same St. Paul Vivo jam non ego sed Christus vivit in me I live now and yet not I but Christ liveth in me A birth and formation so full of marvel and miracle as we may no less say of it than of those other Quis enarrabit c For in the first indeed God is born of God in the second God is born of a Woman but in the third many Men and Women at once both bear and are born of God because Gods formation in Man is Mans reformation unto the image of God his generation in us our regeneration in him And so by the same act in which God is born in Man in the self-same both act and instant Man is born of God as St. John speaks And that by the insensible and unsearchable working of the Spirit which works so secretly as Man himself cannot observe and discern it though it work within himself and even in his own spirit The child is not more inobservably conceived in the womb of the Mother than Christ Jesus in the Soul of the Christian. And therefore the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation saith our Saviour that it is come we find but how it came we perceive not and what we cannot discern how should we express who then shall declare c. Neither is it more secret than strange and powerful there being nothing of greater admiration than the wonderful work of God in the conversion of a sinner How marvellous is it that the hearts of wicked Men that were for so many years before domicilia Daemonum the habitation of Devils wherein the Foxes had holes and the fowls of the air their nests that is deceipt and ambition roosted and with them Luxury and Avarice Envy Wrath and Malice Prophaneness Falshood and all manner of filthiness until it became a den of beasts a cage of unclean birds and indeed a very Hell of impure spirits that such a Stable of filth Augea●'s Stable should suddenly be cleansed and a Tenent of Grace Jesus as in that of Bethlem be born in it in an instant That so dark vaults of lusts and uncleanness should presently be transformed into Temples of the Holy Ghost That so impotent and inthralled Souls should be indued with power from above and inspired with such an Almighty and miraculous Faith as is able in a moment to cast out all those Devils To teach the prophane to speak with a new tongue the wrathful and vindictive with patience to suck up all the poysoned malice venemous stomachs can disgorge against them without hurt and not only to be good in themselves but by laying their hands on the sick by their charitable works unto the distressed not only relieve them but with their very example recover others that were sick of sin unto death Who can behold such a change such and so sudden a mutation and not say with David This is the Lords doing and it is marvellous in our eyes Sure it is digitus Dei the finger of God indeed the very power of his Spirit nay no other than another incarnation and spiritual birth of the Son of God in such a Soul And quis enarrabit A generation performed with so secret and yet so powerful an operation Which yet we