Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	able_a	according_a	act_n	65	3	5.2692	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30441	A sermon preached at the funeral of the Honourable Robert Boyle at St. Martins in the Fields, January 7, 1691/2 by the Right Reverend Father in God, Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1692 (1692)	Wing B5899; ESTC R21619	22,132	38

A SERMON Preached at the FUNERAL OF THE HONOURABLE Robert Boyle AT St. MARTINS in the Fields JANUARY 7. 1691 2 By the Right Reverend Father in God GILBERT Lord Bishop of SARUM LONDON Printed for Ric. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown and Iohn Taylor at the Ship in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCXCII ECCLES II. 26. For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom knowledge and joy WHEN the Author of this Book the Wisest of Men applied his heart to know and to search to seek out wisdom and the reason or nature of things and summed up the Account of all Article by Article one by one to find out the thread of Nature and the Plann of its great Author tho his Soul sought after it yet the Riddle was too dark he even he could not discover it But one man among a thousand he did find and happy was he in that discovery if among all the Thousands that he knew he found One counting Figure for so many Cyphers which tho they encreased the Number yet did not swell up the Account but were so many Nothings or less and worse than Nothings according to his estimate of Men and Things We have reason rather to think that by a Thousand is to be meant a vast and indefinite number otherwise it must be confessed that Solomon's Age was indeed a Golden one if it produced one Man to a Thousand that carry only the name and figure but that do not answer the end and excellency of their being The different Degrees and Ranks of Men with relation to their inward powers and excellencies is a surprizing but melancholy Observation Many seem to have only a Mechanical Life as if there were a moving and speaking Spring within them equally void both of Reason and Goodness The whole race of men is for so many years of Life little better than encreasing Puppits many are Children to their Lives end The Soul does for a large portion of Life sink wholly into the Body in that shadow of death Sleep that consumes so much of our time the several disorders of the Body the Blood and the Spirits do so far subdue and master the Mind as to make it think act and speak according to the different ferments that are in the humours of the Body and when these cease to play the Soul is able to hold its tenure no longer all these are strange and amazing speculations and force one to cry out Why did such a perfect Being make such feeble and imperfect Creatures Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain The Secret is yet more astonishing when the frowardness the pride and ill-nature the ignorance folly and fury that hang upon this poor flattered Creature are likewise brought into the Account He that by all his observation and encrease of knowledge only encreaseth sorrow while he sees that what is wanting cannot be numbred and that which is crooked cannot be made straight is tempted to go about and with Solomon to make his heart to despair of all the labour wherein he has travelled But as there is a dark side of Humane Nature so there is likewise a bright one The flights and compass of awakened Souls is no less amazing The vast croud of Figures that lie in a very narrow corner of the Brain which a good memory and a lively imagination can fetch out in great order and with much beauty The strange reaches of the Mind in abstracted Speculations and the amazing progress that is made from some simple Truths into Theories that are the admiration as well as the entertainment of the thinking part of mankind The sagacity of apprehending and judging even at the greatest distance The elevation that is given to Sense and the Sensible powers by the invention of Instruments and which is above all the strength that a few thoughts do spread into the mind by which it is made capable of doing or suffering the hardest things the Life which they give and the Calm which they bring are all so unaccountable that take all together a Man is a strange huddle of Light and Darkness of Good and Evil and of Wisdom and Folly The same Man not to mention the difference that the several Ages of Life make upon him feels himself in some minutes so different from what he is in the other parts of his Life that as the one fly away with him into the transports of joy so the other do no less sink him into the depressions of sorrow He scarce knows himself in the one by what he was in the other Upon all which when one considers a Man both within and without he concludes that he is both wonderfully and also fearfully made That in one side of him he is but a little lower than Angels and in another a little a very little higher than Beasts But how astonishing soever this Speculation of the medly and contrariety in our composition may be it contributes to raise our esteem the higher of such persons as seem to have arisen above if not all yet all the eminent frailties of humane nature that have used their Bodies only as Engines and Instruments to their Minds without any other care about them but to keep them in good case fit for the uses they put them to that have brought their souls to a purity which can scarce appear credible to those who do not imagine that to be possible to another which is so far out of their own reach and whose Lives have shined in a course of many years with no more allay nor mixture than what just served to shew that they were of the same humane nature with others who have lived in a constant contempt of Wealth Pleasure or the Greatness of this World whose minds have been in as constant a pursuit of Knowledge in all the several ways in which they could trace it who have added new Regions of their own discoveries and that in a vast variety to all that they had found made before them who have directed all their enquiries into Nature to the Honour of its great Maker And have joyned two things that how much soever they may seem related yet have been sound so seldom together that the World has been tempted to think them inconsistent A constant looking into Nature and a yet more constant study of Religion and a Directing and improving of the one by the other and who to a depth of Knowledg which often makes men morose and to a heighth of Piety which too often makes them severe have added all the softness of Humanity and all the tenderness of Charity an obliging Civility as well as a melting kindness when all these do meet in the same person and that in eminent degrees we may justly pretend that we have also made Solomon's observation of one man but alas the Age is not so fruitful of such that we can add one among a thousand To such a man the Characters given in the words of my