Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	age_n	year_n	youth_n	286	3	8.0905	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75792	The life of S. Augustine. The first part Written by himself in the first ten books of his Confessions faithfully translated.; Confessiones. Liber 1-10. English	Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo.; R. H., 1609-1678.	1660 (1660)	Wing A4211; Thomason E1755_2; ESTC R208838	184,417	226

departs full of anger and disdain but if it be otherwise stayes attentive and sheds joyful tears Love we sorrows then and tears Surely every one desires joy rather Or is it that when as we desire that none should be miserable yet we are pleased that our selves should be pitiful and this pity not being at all without some grief therfore becomes grief it self also affected And all this proceeds from a certain vein and source of friendship in us But whither goes that source Whither runs it Wherefore falls it at length into that torrent of boyling pitch those vast whirlpools of stinking lusts into which it becomes wilfully changed and transformed being precipitated and degraded from its own celestial purity Must all affection and pity then be abandoned by no means and hence sometimes grief also may be loved But beware of any uncleaness in these O my soul under the tuition of my God the God of our Fathers and through all ages to be praised and superexalted beware of any uncleanesse in them For now also am I not void of compassion and pity But whereas then in those theaters I co-rejoyced with lovers when enjoying their unchast desires though these imaginary only in the play and out of pity to them grew as sad when they lost one another and yet both these passions afforded me delight I now contrary more pity one when triumphing in his obtained wickednesse than when despairing in the missing of that pernicious pleasure and in the loss of that miserable felicity This certainly is the truer compassion but in it the heart is not joyed For though he is commended for doing an office of charity that condoles anothers misery yet had he alwaies rather that thing had not been which he condoles whosoever is truly compassionate For if good-will could be thus ill-wishing which cannot be then he that truly and sincerely pities might desire another should be miserable to the end that himself so might be merciful Some grief then is to be approved none to be loved yet is it sometimes too approved for this belongs to thee only Lord God that whilst thou lovest souls farr more purely then we and more incorruptibly hast pity toward them yet no manner of sorrow for them can wound thee And who is sufficient for such things besides thee But I then poor wretch Loved to grieve and searched what might cause it when in another mans and this only a personated disaster that action of the player delighted more and stronglier bewitched me that drew tears from me And what marvel was it that I an unfortunate sheep strayed from thy flock and impatient of thy discipline should be overspread with such a nasty scab And hence was that affection to sorrow not such as pierced me inwardly for neither did I love to suffer what I loved to see but such as being related only and feigned but razed as it were the skin of my soul yet like the scratching of an envenomed nail an enflamed tumor and impostumation and putrefaction followed upon it Such was the life I led But indeed was that then to be called a life O my God CHAP. III. His Concupiscence in the Church the Ambition of his studies and conversation amongst the jeering and abusive Wits ANd then thy mercy ever faithfull to me hovered still afar off over me Whilst I was dissolved into all impiety pursuing a sacrilegious curiosity which brought me having forsaking thee to low and treacherous vanities and to the circumventing service of maligning Devils to whom I sacrificed my villanies though in them all I was still scourged by thee Then I dared even in the celebration of thy solemn feasts within the walls of thy sanctuary to exercise my concupiscence and to drive the trade of procuring the fruits of death for which thou scourgedst me with grievous pains but nothing comparable to my crimes O thou my exceeding great mercy my God thou who wert also my refuge from those terrible mischievous † The Eversores persons amongst whom I gadded here and there with an outstretched neck a run-away from thee loving my own wayes and not thine and loving that my fugitive Liberty Those studies which were counted of great repute had a strong influence upon me as fitting us for pleading in the publick Courts of Justice and I had an ambition to be excellent in them thus to become so much the famouser how much by my eloquence more deceiving so great is the blindness of Men glorying also in their blindness And by this time I was grown a head-Scholler in the Rhetorick-school pleased with self-conceit and swollen with pride though much more modest O Lord thou knowest than some others were and far removed from those Eversions the † The bafling Wits of the school Eversores made for this cruell and diabolical name is as it were a badge of their witty urbanity Amongst these I lived with a shameless bashfulness because my self was not the like and with these I conversed being taken with their society whose actions I ever abhorred I mean those eversions of theirs with which they wantonly persecuted the modesty of new-comers gratis and unprovoked abusing and disgracing them and therewith feeding their malicious mirth An act so like to those of Devils that what could they be more truly called than Eversores being everted first and perverted themselves by those maligning Spirits who first deceive and deride them in this very thing that they delight to deride and to deceive others CHAP. IV. In the nineteenth year of his age his reading of Cicero's Hortensius invites him from affectation of Eloquence to the search of Wisdom AMongst this company then a youth I learned books of Eloquence in which I desired to be eminent but out of a faulty and ambitious end and a fond affectation of humane vanities and in the usual course of study I then was to read a certain book of one Cicero whose tongue almost all Men admire not so his heart Which Treatise of his conteined an exhortation to Philosophy called Hortensius And this book it was that first altered my affections and turned my addresses unto thee O Lord and rendred my purposes and desires clean of another mould than formerly Suddenly all other vain aspirings were slighted by me and with incredible ardency I lusted after the immortality of wisdom and began already to rise up that I might again return unto thee Now not to sharpen my tongue which thing I came thither to purchase with the exhibition my Mother then allowed me I being now nineteen years old and my Father deceased two years before no more now 〈◊〉 my tongue made I use of that book nor did the how but what was said in it affect me Now how did I burn O my God how did I burn to re-mount up from things terrene toward thee not then knowing what thou wouldst act with me For with thee only is wisdom and the love of wisdom called Philosophy was it with

pulse indicates some danger all that long for his recovery become sick in mind as he in body he becomes somewhat better and walks a little about yet not restored to his former strength and there is already such mirth upon this as was not before when he went about healthful and lusty And so all the pleasures of this humane life arise from some precedence of pain and that not only casual and undesired but many times purposely and industriously procured Eating and drinking are no delight without the foregoing molestation of hung●r and thirst And drunkards by eating salt things provoke that biting heat which drinking may afterward with the more pleasure quench and allay And between contracts and nuptials 't is ordered some time should intercede lest when once married he should lesse value her being possessed whom he first longed not for being after espousals deferred This holds in wicked and prophane this in lawful and allowed joyes this in the sincerest love and friendship this in him who had been dead and was alive had perished and was recovered Every where greater joy is preceded with greater anxiety What is this O Lord my God that whenas thou art an eternal joy to thy self and when as some-things also that are from thee rejoyce perpetually about thee How is it that this inferiour part of thy creature so alternately ebbs and flows is grieved and contented displeased and reconciled Is this the limited measure of their being and the set proportion thou wouldst allot to them when from the highest heaven to the lowest parts of earth from the beginning to the end of times from the Angel to the Worm from the first motion to the last the several sorts of thy good creatures were placed by thee every one in their proper seats and all thy just and upright works were acted by thee every one in their proper seasons Woe is me How high art thou in the highest how profound art thou in the lowest of them never departing from us and yet we hardly attaining unto thee CHAP. IV. Why more joy in the conversion of men eminent or noble INspire O Lord and operate excite and restrain enflame and elevate us breath forth thy fragrant odour and lustill thy delicate tast make us in love with thee and let us run after thee How many are there who do out of a more profound hell of darkness than Victorinus return toward thee and come to thee and are illuminated by thee and receive that thy light John 1.12 which who so receive have power also given them to become thy sons But yet as such happen to be lesse known abroad so even those who know them joy less for them For where more men rejoyce there every one hath more joy because they hear and are enflamed from one another Again those Converts known by more are guides to more in the way to salvation and go before many others that will follow and therefore men rejoyce also more for these that go before because they rejoyce not for them single Otherwise farre be it that in thy tabernacle the persons of the rich should be accepted before the poor or the noble before the ignoble when as rather 1 Cor. 1.27 28 1 Cor. 15 9. Acts 13.9 Thou hast chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty and base things of the world and things that are despised hast thou chosen yea and things which are not that thou mightest bring to nought things that are And yet the same least of thine Apostles by whose tongue thou spakest these words when as the Proconful Paul being conquered of his pride and greatness by his arms and being brought under the gentle yoke of thy Christ became now a Subject of the great King he himself from his former name Saul delighted to be called Paul in memory of so great a Victory For the enemy is much more conquered in such a one whom he more possesseth and by whom he possesseth more and the proud are by him more possessed from the title of their nobility and by them many more others from the name of their authority By how much higher therefore * the breast of Victorinus was esteemed in which the Devil had held and fortified himself as an impregnable for t and * the tongue of Victorinus with which great and keen weapon so many souls had been slain so much greater must needs be the exultation of thy children Mat. 12.29 2 Tim. 2.21 when our King had thus bound the strong man and when they saw his vessels taken from his service and made clean and fitted for thy honour and serviceable unto to the Lord for every good work CHAP. V. What operation the story of Victorinus had upon him and his great captivity under former ill Customs WHilst Simplicianus thy servant told these things of Victorinus I was enflamed to imitate them which was his design also in telling them And when he had added also that in those dayes of Julian the Emperour a Law was enacted prohibiting all Christians to teach any humane literature and particularly Oratory which Law Victorinus most welcomly entertaining chose rather to forsake his own l●quacious school than thy word which makes even the tongues of Infants eloquent Psal 8.2 he seemed to me in this not more valiant than happy in gaining so an occasion of a total vacancy and attendance on thee Which thing I also aspired-to and sigh'd-after but was fast bound not with anothers irons but those of my own hard and iron will The enemy possest my perverse desires and of them had made a chain and fast-tied me with it For of a perverse will there was made lust and in serving that lust there was made custom and not resisting that custom it became necessity with which as with certain links fastened one within another this cruell servitude held me close shackled And the new Will but now beginning to grow in me by which I desired disengaged of all other loves freely to serve thee and by which I wished to enjoy thee O my God the only certain pleasure was not yet able to master the former will strengthened with age So these two wills of mine the one old the other new one carnal the other spiritual combated one another and in their disagreeance rent and divided my soul Thus I understood my self being the experiment that which I had read How the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the spirit against the fl●sh and it was I that was in them both but more I in that which in me I now all●wed than in that Rom. 7.20 which in me I disallowed For in this it was more not I because in a great part I rather suffered it against my mind than willingly acted it But yet this custome now so eagerly warring against me was contracted by me and willingly it was that I came thither whither now I will'd that I had never come And who could justly reprehend this tyranny