Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	abandon_v	body_n	uncleanness_n	25	3	11.1184	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58802	The Christian life part III. Wherein the great duties of justice, mercy, and mortification are fully explained and inforced. Vol. IV. By John Scott D.D. late rector of St. Giles's in the Fields.; Christian life. Vol. 4.	Scott, John, 1639-1695.; White, Robert, 1645-1703, engraver.	1696 (1696)	Wing S2056; ESTC R218661	194,267	475

Laws of Generation he hath ordered all Men to come into the World weak and helpless and unable to provide for themselves he was bound in Goodness to oblige their Parents by a natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Affection to nourish and take Care of them till they grow able to take Care for themselves that so they might not be utterly abandoned so since he hath thought good to expose us here to so many Miseries and Calamities he stood obliged by the eternal Benignity of his Nature to oblige us by all the Bowels of Mercy to succour and relieve one another till we are grown up to that Perfection of Happiness wherein we shall have no more need of Succour that so at present we may not be left destitute and forlorn but may find all that Relief in one another's Mercy which is wanting to us in his immediate Providence For 't is for wise and merciful Ends that he permits us to be miserable here to correct our Follies and polish and cultivate our Nature and train us up under a severe Discipline into a State of Everlasting Happiness and therefore for the Redress of these Miseries which for our Good he is fain to inflict upon us it was necessary he should Consign us to the Protection of one anothers Mercy that so this for the present might be a Cordial to our Griefs a Supply to our Wants an Ease to our Oppressions and a Sanctuary to our Calamities till Misery hath effected the gracious End she designed it for and then he will release our Mercy from its Work and permit it to enjoy an Everlasting Sabbath But so long as he thinks fit to continue us in this state of Misery his own Benignity will oblige him to oblige us to assist and comfort one another by the mutual Exercise of our Mercy that so being instead of Gods to one another we may not be utterly abandoned to Wretchedness but by mutually succouring each other might all of us be tolerably happy which we should all of us most certainly be were we but so benign and merciful to one another as he expects and requires CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Mortification GOD having made us free Agents and planted in our Natures an uncontroulable Liberty of Choice in Wisdom he hath so ordered and disposed things that as we cannot be Miserable unless we will so neither shall we be happy whether we will or no. For as his Goodness would not suffer him to make us necessarily miserable so neither would his Wisdom permit him to entail our Happiness on our Natures and make it inseparable to our Beings for should he have done so he must have altered the Laws of his own wise Creation and made those Beings to act necessarily which he made to act freely For Happiness is the End of all our Actions and therefore should God have made that necessary to us he must have made us to act towards it with the same Necessity as inanimate Bodies do towards their proper Center and consequently there would have been no such thing as a free Agent in the lower World That we may always act therefore according to the Condition and Frame of a free Nature the Foundations of all our Happiness and Misery are laid in the right Use or Abuse of our Liberty and do immediately spring out of the Wisdom or Folly of our own Choices so that if we chuse wisely according to the Laws of Virtue and right Reason we do thereby advance towards that happy and heavenly State we were created for as on the contrary if we chuse foolishly according to the rash Counsels of our own vicious Appetites and sensual Inclinations we thereby sink our selves deeper and deeper towards the Abyss of endless and inconceivable Misery For such is the Frame and Constitution of our Natures that we cannot be good and miserable nor vicious and happy and accordingly the Apostle sets before us the inevitable Fate of our own Actions Rom. viii 13. If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live What these Deeds of the Flesh or Body are the Apostle telleth us Gal. v. 19 20 21. The works of the flesh are manifest which are these adultery fornication uncleanness lasciviousness idolatry witchcraft hatred variance emulations wrath strife seditions heresies envyings murders drunkenness revellings and such like and they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God This is the Muster-roll of that formidable Army of Wickednesses with which we are to engage and which we must vanquish or perish for ever If ye mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live i. e. if ye kill and destroy them if ye wholly cease from them both as to the outward Act of them and the inward Appetite and Inclination towards them For Mortification doth not only consist in a formal Abstinence from the outward Acts of Sin or a superficial Skinning over the Orifice of its Wounds but searches to the very bottom of that putrid Core within and eats out the inward Corruption from whence those outward Blisters arise It purges the Heart as well as the Hands and drains those impure Inclinations which are the Springs of all Impiety and Wickedness BUT to handle this Subject more particularly I shall do these three things First SHEW wherein Mortification consists Secondly WHAT are the Proper Instruments of it Thirdly WHAT are the most prevailing Motives to it I. WHEREIN doth Mortification consist I answer in these three Things 1. In Abstinence from the outward Acts of Sin 2. In not consenting unto any Sin 3. In a constant Endeavour to extinguish our involuntary Sins I. MORTIFICATION requires Abstinence from the outward Acts of Sin For it is impossible that any Man should mortify his Lusts while he indulges himself in the free Practice of them because Practice is the Fuel that foments and feeds the inward vicious Inclinations and both pampers and enrages the lustful Appetites of the Soul For that Delight which we reap from acting our own Concupiscences doth but increase and provoke them it being natural to Men when they have been pleased with any Action to be more vehemently inclined to repeat it the Delight which they found in the former Enjoyment provoking their Desires to enjoy it again So that we may as well hope to put out a Fire by a continual feeding it with Fuel and blowing it into Flame as to mortify a Lust whilst by our continued practising it we nurse and cherish it and do at once both feed and irritate its Flames If therefore we would ever mortify the Lusts of the Flesh we must strictly restrain our selves from all outward Acts of them For whilst we indulge our selves in these we feed our Disease and pamper our bad Inclinations into vicious Habits and our vicious Habits into sinful Necessities II. MORTIFICATION consists in the Dissent of our Wills from all sinful Proposals

Temper consists for doubtless with the same Temper of Mind that we are of in this World we shall go into the other for meerly by going into the other World Men cannot be altered as to their main State though they may be perfected as to those good Dispositions that were here begun so that he that is wicked here will be wicked there too and that same Disposition of Mind that we carry with us to our Graves we shall retain with us in Eternity If therefore we would know what the Temper of a wicked Soul will be in the future State our best way will be to enquire what it is that we call a wicked Temper here because it will be the same here and hereafter Now a wicked Temper consists of two things First of Sensuality and Secondly of Devilishness By Sensuality I mean an immoderate Propension of the Soul to the Pleasures of the Body such an head-strong Propension as wholly diverts the Soul from all her nobler Delights to the brutish Pleasures of Intemperance and Wantonness and Gluttony together with those other Lusts that are subservient to them such as Fraud and Covetousness and Ambition and the like By Devilishness I mean those spiritual Wickednesses which do not so much depend upon the Body as the former but are more immediately centered in the Soul such as Pride and Malice and Wrath and Envy and Hatred and Revenge c. which are the Sins of the Devil by which those once glorious and blessed Spirits were transformed into Friends and Furies These are the Venomous Ingredients of which a wicked Temper is composed If you enquire therefore what the Temper of a wicked Soul will be in the future State I answer it will be the same there that it is here that is it will be sensual and devilish As for the latter there can be no doubt of it for Devilishness being immediately subjected in the Soul cannot be supposed to be separated from her by her Separation from the Body and may as well abide in naked and separated Spirits as it doth in the Apostate Angels And as for Sensuality though it cannot be supposed that a Soul should retain the Appetites of the Body after it is separated from it yet having wholly abandon'd it self to corporeal Pleasures while it was in the Body it may and doubtless will retain a vehement Hankering after a Re-union with it which is the only Sensuality that a separated Soul is capable of For when She comes into the World of Spirits her former accustoming her self unto the Pleasures of the Body will have so debauched and vitiated her Appetite that She will be incapable of relishing any other Pleasures but what are carnal and sensual which because She cannot enjoy but in the Body She must needs retain an earnest and vehement Longing to be re-united to it For having never had any former Experience of the Pleasures of Spirits when she comes into the other World she will find her self miserably destitute of all that can be pleasant and delightful to her and because she knows that the only pleasures she can relish are such as are not to be enjoyed but in conjunction with the Body therefore all her Appetites and Longings must needs unite into one outragious Desire of being embody'd again that so she may repeat these sensual Pleasures and act over the brutish Scene anew Which possibly may be the Reason why such sensual Souls have appeared so often in Church-yards and Charnel-houses Union with the Body being that which these wandring Ghosts have the most eager Affections to and that they are most loth to be separated from which makes them perpetually hover about and linger after their dear Consort the Body the Impossibility of their Re-union with it not being able to cure them of their impotent Desires but still they would fain be alive again Virgil. Iterumque ad tarda reverti Corpora quae lucis miferis tam dira cupido And this I doubt not was one great Reason of those extraordinary Abstinencies and bodily Severities that were imposed by the Primitive Church that by this means they might gently wean the Soul from the Pleasures of the Body and teach it before-hand to live upon the Delights of separated Spirits that so it might drop into Eternity with Ease and Willingness like ripe Fruit from the Tree and that when it was arrived into the other World it might not have its Appetite so vitiated with these sensual Delights as to be incapable of relishing those spiritual Ones and so be endlesly tormented with a fruitless Desire of returning to the Body again This therefore from the whole is plain and apparent that the Temper of wicked Souls in the other World will be much the same as it is in this that is sensual and devilish made up of Rage and Spight and Malice together with a vehement Longing after the deserted Body in which they enjoyed the only Pleasures they were capable of AND having thus shewed you what are the Felicities of the future State and what the Temper of wicked Souls will be in the future State I now proceed III. To shew you how contrary such a Temper and Disposition must be unto such Felicities And indeed Sensuality and Devilishness are the only Indispositions for Heaven but such Indispositions they are that if upon an impossible Supposition a Soul could be admitted with them into the Habitations of the Blessed She would not be able to relish one Pleasure there among all the Delights with which the beatifick State abounds there would none be found that would please her distemper'd Palate which like a fevourish Tongue must disrelish and nauseate the sweetest Liquor by reason of its overflowing Gall. And hence the Apostle exhorting his Christian Colossians to be thankful unto God for making them meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light telleth them that this was effected by God's translating them out of the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of his own dear Son that is by enabling them to mortifie their Lusts and inspiring them with the Graces of the Gospel 1 Colos. xii 13. And this will evidently appear if we consider the particular Felicities of which the heavenly State consists which as I have shewed above consist First In the Vision of God Secondly In our Likeness or Resemblance to Him Thirdly In the Love of Him and fourthly In the Society of pure and blessed Spirits to all which there is an utter Antipathy and Disagreement in every sensual and devilish Temper and Disposition I. IN every sensual and devilish Mind there is an Antipathy and Contrariety to the Vision of God for the Sight of God can be pleasant unto none but those who are in some measure contemper'd to his Perfections and transform'd into his Likeness While we are unlike him and contrary to him as we must needs be while we are sensual and devilish the Sight of Him would be more apt to amaze and