Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	account_n	act_v	action_n	22	3	5.7248	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63921	Two discourses introductory to a disquisition demonstrating the unlawfulness of the marriage of cousin Germans, from law, reason, Scripture, and antiquity by John Turner ...	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.	1682 (1682)	Wing T3319; ESTC R11417	26,430	68

no better or more satisfactory account of any Action can be given either to our selves or others than that all things considered we have acted most wisely for our own Advantage XII This is that which depresseth our Spirits and robs us of our natural Cheerfulness and Vigour that makes us hang down our heads and fills our minds with so many painful Thoughts upon the sense of having neglected or swerved from our Duty into the Commission of that which hath the Appearance and Character of a Crime that we are sensible we have acted foolishly and that we cannot reconcile what we have done to our own Interest or to the Interest of Mankind we are out of favour with our selves and others and being deserted and despised by all that have any value for the Reputation of their Integrity or Prudence we become forlorn useless and contemptible Creatures XIII But when we do those things which are for our own Advantage or for the good of the Publick in which our own safety and security is included this fills us all over with a strange kind of lightsomness and jollity of Spirit we are at peace with our selves and as far as may be out of all apprehension of fear or danger from others we rejoyce in the consciousness of having acted as becomes wise and understanding men and we are confirmed in our Opinion of our selves by the Approbation of our Neighbours and by this means we are put in a Capacity of being as powerful and considerable among men as our Condition and Circumstances of Life and Fortune will allow and these things I take to be a very plain Testimony of Mankind and of Nature her self to the truth of this Proposition That all Obligation is founded upon Interest and that to do wisely and wickedly are things in themselves and by the unanimous Confession of both Parties the Innocent and the Guilty inconsistent with each other XIV From whence we may discern the Vanity and Folly of those learned men who are used to talk so loudly of essential Rectitudes and eternal Notions and I know not what phantastical Idea's in an abstracted way whereas there is indeed nothing which is either good or bad meerly by its self but every thing which is good is good that is useful to something and every thing which is bad is so with reference to some Nature or other to which it is more or less pernicious and destructive from whence it follows the nature of Obligation being a result arising from the Usefulness or Hurtfulness of a thing proposed to be the Object of a free Agents choice with respect to that Agent which is conversant about it that all Obligation must be not of a simple but of a compound or a concrete Nature and must always have an inseparable Respect to the Interest or Happiness of those to whom that Obligation is binding And it is not only true that our Interest and our Duty are both of them the same but that it is absolutely impossible any thing should be our Duty which is not our Interest into the Bargain for no man can possibly be obliged to that which all things considered will be to his Disadvantage XV. Yet I do not deny that all the moral Vertues of what sort soever whether they be Personal or Political have an essential and eternal goodness in them but not in that sense in which some Learned men more speculative seemingly profound then wise have taken it for if you ask them why these things are good or evil all you can get from them is that these things are Eternal verities and that they are as plain as that two and two make four or that out of nothing comes nothing or that both parts of a contradiction cannot be true at the same time all which propositions are plain in themselves but to assign a reason of these things they cannot do it and it is necessary they say that there should be some Propositions whose truth must be discerned by their own light otherwise men would always argue backwards in infinitum and there could be no such thing as science in World XVI But though it be very true that all demonstration in its last result is to proceed ab indemonstrabili and is to be ultimately resolved into some self evident Maxim whose truth in its self must be every whit as plain and as evident to be seen as the broadest Channel of the Aegyptian Nile when it parts and divides it self into Seven several Streams but in its causes as obscure and as little understood as the first source and fountain of that wondrous River And though it be likewise true that this is the very case of all those Propositions which I have newly mentioned that they cannot be demonstrated by any thing more clear and evident then themselves yet these Propositions as they are very plain so it is no wonder to find all mankind to be agreed unanimously in assenting to them because it is no mans interest to deny them and therefore every man is willing to acknowledge his real sense and feeling of the matter XVII But when you come to apply what hath been said to moral truths you will find a manifest inconvenience in asserting them also to be of the same Nature with Mathematical Maxims whose truth as it is the clearest of all in it self so in its causes it is the most obscure or to give no better reason why these things are true than only to say they are not false or they are not bad because they are essentially and eternally good and the inconvenience you will run will be this XVIII There are a great many in the World that have a mind to be Wicked one would gratifie his Lust another his Revenge a third his Avarice and a fourth his Ambition by means which are generally thought to be Unlawful and as there are some that would do these things and therefore would be glad of any pretence to put a good face and Colour upon what they are about so there are great numbers of such as have already been actually guilty and these would be every whit as glad of any excuse to justifie and defend themselves XIX And therefore when you would reprove and chide them for what they have done or for what they intend and yet all you can say for your self or against them is that the rules they transgress are essentially and eternally good that they are so because they are so and because it is impossible it should be otherwise this instead of arguing is nothing else but bold affirmation and peremptory confidence which may be turned upon your self for they will tell you perhaps that the charms of that which you call Vice and Wickedness are equal to those of Virtue and that the essential rectitude that is the quelque chose or the Je ne scay quoy of both are exactly the same and that it is not only true what the Stoicks of Old were used to affirm