Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	abase_v	soul_n	thankful_a	33	3	11.2060	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A93143	The holy life of Monr. De Renty, a late nobleman of France and sometimes councellor to King Lewis the 13th. Wrintten [sic] in French by John Baptist S. Jure. And faithfully translated into English, by E.S. Gent.; Vie de Monsieur de Renty. English	Saint-Jure, Jean-Baptiste, 1588-1657.; E. S., Gent.	1657 (1657)	Wing S334; Thomason E1587_2; ESTC R203459	200,696	375

that either by his sloth he was not answerable to their extent or that by the sole misery of nature he used them and made them lose some part of their force as it happens to Plants of the Levant which removed into a strange soil do not retain their vertue but degenerate and savour of the earth they are removed to And if the spiritual things of nature are allayed and corrupted in their passage through our senses how much more reason is there to think that the Divine and spiritual things of grace will there become enfeebled and altered These considerations rendred him most humble even in the greatest gifts of God and in things of most sublimity SECT 2. The pursuance of his Humility in heart AS the affections we bear to any thing are always founded upon the esteem we make of it so Monsieur de Renty esteeming himself so low so little and nothing in consequence thereof did extreamly abase and vilipend himself within his heart This he did in every thing and one of his strongest inclinations according to grace which is a great token of the Spirit of God in a soul was to be always condemning of himself He wrote to his Director I have at the same time two apprehensions quite contrary the one to avow to you with thankful acknowledgement to God that he fills me with effects of his goodness and impressions of his Kingdom and the other that I am more disposed to condemn than to regard my self for upon the whole what I do is pittiful Another time after some speech to him of many great enlightnings and excellent sentiments which God had communicated to him he told him I rest not upon all this I told you onely what is past to render you an account not making use of my judgement but to condemn my self for vices suspending it as to other things and committing it to God He wrote to another Confident I know not what will become of our business one must not speak a word in sweetness and patience but I shall lose my credit somewhat if this could be throughly lost it would be great justice Alas if no body endur'd me and all the world condemn'd me my pride perhaps would be humbled Carried on by this Spirit he had an ardent desire though always with his ordinary tranquillity and giving himself up to the orders of God to receive some disgrace If I were to wish any thing it should be to be much humbled and nullified and to be treated as an off-scouring by others This would be my joy but I believe I deserve not so great a favour This desire carried him to such a point that had he not been withheld with the consideration of greater good he had done strange things to be disesteemed and receive confusion Out of this sentiment and abundance of his heart he said thus to one I should have great pleasure if it were permitted me to go naked in my shirt through the streets of Paris to make my self disesteemed and taken for a fool Whence we must observe two things the first that God gives sometimes to holy souls some thoughts affections and desires so raised above the common pitch and humane reason that they may seem extravagant as this here which he gave to Monsieur de Renty and which was before him also in our founder S. Ignatius The second is that we must not at all put in execution such desires till before hand they have been well examined and justly weighed in the ballance of Charity and edification of our Neighbour This burning desire which he had to be diesteemed made him seek for and love his own abjection and when it came to take it not onely with patience but also which is the highest step that one can mount in humility with joy He gave an evident and notable testimony thereof in the first journey he made to Dijon whither a suit that he had with the Lady his Mother and which to him by an extraordinary dispensation of God was one of the greatest exercises of patience and humiliation that he underwent in all his life of which I shall speak more at large in the following Chapter had obliged him to go for thus he wrote to his Director the 24. of July 1643. I am at Dijon now seeing God is so pleased where I have learnt by the prejudicate opinions that were entertained concerning me what it is that God would draw from my journey which is that I lead a life secret and unknown to men in the spirit of penance The bruit which they had spread concerning me was that I was a Bigot and had nothing but artifices and shews of devotion for the colouring of my naughtiness that indeed I have kept my self much private in my closet out of fear to give by coming abroad rather scandal than any example of vertue I have found a generality that sollicited against me though such as from whom I had good cause methinks for divers good reasons to hope for a prop than from any other but have found the quite contrary But so also as God hereby hath done me many favours I have been to see them where I have received humiliation with great joy I have been very wary of opening my self in any thing that might recommend me unto them I have onely done in my business what truth required and for any thing else I made it matter of confusion and humiliation as I ought to do I shall be here I believe as one excommunicate and the Scape-Goat of the old Law chased into the wilderness for my enormous sins for which I am of opinion God would have me do penance not by meer pain onely but by such as withal brings shame and confusion with it I tell you this to render you some account not dwelling on it any longer my sole scope being to love God and to condemn my self SECT 3. His Humility in words THe Humility of heart in which Monsieur de Renty was deeply rooted produced in him the Humility of speech which hindred him ever from speaking any word that savoured of vaunting or that carryed the least tincture of arrogance and esteem of himself or which was uttered in a haughty manner or in a tone imperious or conceited but on the contrary they were all of them tempered with humility and modesty and as he deemed himself to be indeed a sinner lazy ungrateful perfidious ignorant so did he set forth and qualifie himself with these names and titles We have seen hereof already something before whereto we will adde also this which he writ to a certain person I am to speak the truth but an Idiot a poor Layick and a sinner Writing to a Priest he said What do I an unclean one and a Plebeian in grace and in condition in the Church who live in a state that Jesus Christ refused for himself I speak to a Priest and to the anointed of the Lord my God if I should make a reflection

to God which kept him from any other diversion I cloath my self which is soon done and after pass to the Chappel through a little Parlour where over the Chimney I have set an Image of the Holy Virgin holding her Son as the Lady of the House I kiss the earth before her and say Monstra te esse matrem c. I devote my self to her service entirely with the offering up of my Family Wife Children Domesticks and I have practic'd this offering of them to her a long time that by her means they all may be perfected for God and rising up I say to her Mater incomparabilis or a pro nobis After that I enter into the Chappel where I cast my self down and adore God abasing me before him and making me the most little most naked most empty of my self that I can and I hold me there by faith having recourse to his Son and to his Holy Spirit that whatsoever is his pleasure may be done by me and so I abide If I have any Penance to do upon half an hour after six I do it and then I read two Chapters of the New Testament barcheaded and on my knees At seven a clock I go up to a Closet where there are three Stations the first to the Virgin the second to St. Joseph and the third to Teresa to all which I render my little Devoirs and afterwards I give place to my affairs but if there be no business urgent I prostrate my self before God till the time that I go to Mass staying at the Church till half an hour after eleven except on those days when we dine some poor people for then I return at eleven Before dinner I make the Examen of the morning and some Prayers for the Church for the Propagation of Faith and the Souls in Purgatory after that I say the Angelus I dine at twelve and in that while have something read half an hour after twelve I spend an hour with them that have business with me and that 's the time I appoint for that purpose Afterwards I go forth whither the order of God shall direct Some days ore order'd and assign'd for certain Exercises therest are reserv'd and unlimited from one week to another Now if it fall out that I have nothing to do I pray in a Church but happen what will I endeavour not to fail to visit every afternoon the Holy Sacrament and to spend about evening an hour in Devotion About seven a clock when I have made some vocal prayers we go to supper during which time one reads the Martyrologie and the life of the Saint for the day following Supper being done I talk to my children and tell them something for their instruction At nine a clock the bell rings to Prayer which all my Family is to be present at which done each one retires but I keep me in the Chappel in Meditation till ten and then I go to my Chamber recommending my self to my God according to my Bottom of Self-Annthtlation to the Holy Virgin my good Angel and other Saints I take holy water and lay me down in bed where I say the de Profundis for the dead and some other little Prayers and so endeavour to repose And so you have in some sort the order of the day as to my Exterior But for the order of my Interior I have not as I may say any for since I left it will be a year● the Holy Week next my breviary all my forms have left me and now instead of serving me●●s means to go to God they would become hinderance I bear in me ordinarily but with many infidelities so great in all this that I am about to speak of that I write it not without regret because I am nothing but vice and sin I bear I say in me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the presence of the most Holy Trinity or indeed of some Mysterie which elevates me by a simple view to God and with that I do all that the Divine Providence enjoyns me regarding not any things for their greatness or littleness but onely the order of God and the glory which they may render him For the Examens and things done in Community which I mentioned before I often cannot rest my self there I perform indeed the Exterior for the keeping of order but I follow always my Interior without making any change there because when a man hath God there 's no need to search him elsewhere and when he holds us in one manner it is not for us to take hold of him in another and the soul knows well what it is which bottoms it more clearly what unites it and what multiplies and distracts it For the Interior therefore I follow this Attractive and for the Exterior I see the Divine Will which makes me to follow it and which carrieth me to govern my self according to it with the discernment of his Spirit in all simplicity and so I possess by his grace in all things a great silence Interior a profound Reverence and solid Peace I confess me usually on Thursdays according to the order that hath been given me and communicate almost every day as perceiving my self drawn thereto as also to stand in great need of it In a word the Bottom which hath been shewed me to stand on is to render my self to God through Jesus Christ with such a purity as hath in it operation to worship God in Spirit and Truth after a manner altogether stript and naked and of loving him with all my heart with all my soul and with all my power and of seeing in all things and adoring the conduct of God and following it And this onely abiding in my soul all other things in me are defaced and blotted out I have nothing of sensible in me unless now and then some transitory touches but if I may dare to say it when I sound my will I finde it sometime so quick and flaming that it would devour me if the same Lord who animates it though unworthy did not restrain it I enter into an heat and into a fire and even to my fingers ends feel that all within me speaks for its God and stretcheth it self forth in length and breadth in his Immensity that it may there dissolve and there lose it self to glorifie him I cannot express this thing as it is I do not make a stand upon any thing that passeth in me but fall always into my nothingness where I finde my act of purity towards God as above He concludes afterward in these terms I beg your pardon my Reverend Father if this thing here be so ill ordered I have set it down as it hath happened to me I should be very happy if you could know all my miseries for you would have them in great commiseration This was the writing he gave to his Director They that shall read it will judge without doubt if they understand it well and penetrate