Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A54501
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A dying fathers last legacy to an onely child, or, Mr. Hugh Peter's advice to his daughter written by his own hand, during his late imprisonment in the Tower of London, and given her a little before his death.
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Peters, Hugh, 1598-1660.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing P1697; ESTC R32303
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33,960
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130
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like the Squiril leaping from Tree to Tree and Bough to Bough Be much at Home and you will find work enough as long as you keep Christ and sin before you you will have work enough for your Thoughts and if your Fancy be not well fed your Thoughts like Milstones will grinde themselves Spirits rais'd and not imploy'd will torment the Witch that rais'd them And if you set not your self on work the Devil will mark but the several Trees of fruit or others they grow in their own roots and change not Be content to be a shrub Cedars will shake and never desire to be near Greatness Honour often dies grinning and ghastly Our business must be our own as well as our Crosses To meddle with other mens work will be thankless as to take other mens Physick will be useless if not dangerous An hours Idleness is a sin as well as an hours Drunkenness Few mens feet stand before Princes because few mens hands are diligent The Maid was possest because the Devil found her in his own house viz. a Play-house The Busie-body is but a Pedler to carry up and down and vend the Devils Wares How few lose any thing by quietness and doing their own work Their sweet sleep commends it David got his great wound upon this neglect and Peter his by warming his Hands when he should have been breaking his heart in secret Oh keep home keep home I speak experience to you who never found good hour but in mine own work Nor doth this cut off works of Love or Charity which must be attended in their seasons and by their Rules The cure of this evil lies much in Studying duty the end of your Creation being the practice of Saints that though you work here ease is in Heaven all your labour is little enough for your own business be alwayes ready to say I am where the Lord would have me to be How bitter is the remembrance of good hours ill spent How cuting of time lost Death knows no distance whether King or Bishop or Pawn all at the end of the Game is put into one Bag the Grave Be doing your own work what ever your condition be Tell me what our blessed Lord did but the work he was sent about Be like him in this as in all things else and that Spirit of the Lord Jesus be with thee My dear Heart 13. Through your whole course let Truth have its way and do not make Lyes your Refuge they will mock you in the end Mr Reynor and others have written largely about the words and the Tongue but none to James the Apostle You see I do not load you in any thing with Heathens Fathers Poets and their Apothegms which are many in these Cases which I purposely avoid as tickling the ear when often they reach not the heart A Schollar yea a School-boy may gather them but the Truth of God set on by his Spirit must make you consistent All the World is hung with lyes and all of man Proclaims so much Cloaths Meats Trades Salutations yea our Profession of Religion All men are Lyers and all things on this side Christ a Lie The Prince of the Ayre makes it his work who was the Father of Lies Christ calls for Yea and Nay onely I wish in Christianity we could find this Christianity Heathenâ— and Turks shame us it is the blot of the Nation as if we were Lyars in the Womb the sin even lives and dyes with us you may not tell a Lye for God The Prophet Zechary put Peace and Truth together as if they could not be asunder Zech 8.15 16 19. The Root is the Heart from whose abundance the Tongue speaketh Oh the falsness and deceit of this little thing Not a Breakfast for a Kite Away with that distinction of Jocous or Friendly Lyes Psal. 101. David will have no Lyer with him Truth takes in all good Religion God ownes none where it is not Hypocrisie is a Lye Friend Name Credit Estate Beauty Honour c. are full of Lyes John 6. Christ the Truth as well as Life and Way Though every untruth be not a Lye where it is not spoken with a purpose to deceive so men distinguish your care must be to trade with your heart Nathaniels heart was honest and so without guile good feed fell into an honest heart Truth is naked beware of base Coverings Let your conversation be without Guile without a Lie the Lord is the Heart-searcher Sow up your Mouth but let it be with Honestie not Policie As you never hurt your self by speaking little so will you never gain any thing by telling a Lie Let others call this sin a Virtue but do you call it by its own name and hate it as Poison Let Truth be thy Portion it will preserve you and ever say I can do nothing against the Truth dear Child 14. And what I said last urgeth me to commend Wisdom to you which is a very comprehensive word and is justified of her Children But I mean not the Wisdom of this world whether natural or artificial I intend Scripture Wisdom which is from above And this is a Light that God sets up in the Soul to direct us and affect us in our whole course Joh 28. last The Fear of the Lord that is Wisdom and to depart from Evil that is Understanding If you be wise be wise for your self To have all Books in ones Head and want this Catechism in the Heart will never amount to it Many great Clerks not wise many a Statist falls short But this will make you hear Prov. 1.5 It will make you lay a sure Foundation Matth. 7. the Wise Builder This will make you provide for Changes Luke 16.8 This will make you lay in abundantly Matth. 25. the Virgins were wise This will make you bear sorrow Eccles. 7.4 And truly this is Wisdom and the Helps hereunto are to become a Fool 1 Cor. 3.18 To number your dayes that so you may apply your heart to Wisdom To beg it of God Jam. 1.5 But above all to make Christ your Wisdom 1 Cor. 1. last Oh that you were thus wise Much of Wit must be pared off before it will be usefull I have seen the wayes of it though never could pretend much to it But this I know that being unsanctified it is a sword in a mad-mans hand spends it self in vanity foolish jesting abuse of those who are weaker than our selves yea often to play with the blessed Word of God But this Wisdom will guide preserve honour you How doth Solomon admire it in the Proverbs bids you seek it love it follow after it and this is Christ himself You shall never have comfort in suffering for Folly therefore see the plague and hide which hath invited some so to do often Experience which is the observation of many Events will help you much in this study be much in the Word which will make you wise to Salvation Let your Companions
commend You dear Child 18. And because sin will be creeping into all your conditions waies and works something I must advise you about it from Experience though many Books are written about it as Mr. Goodwyns Sinfulnesse of Sin c. Yet Two things take from me Be marvellous careful it break not in Secondly as diligent to drive it out speedily And for the former Gouge and Gurnal I commend about the putting on the whole Armour Ephes. 6. Sin is a breach of the Law and the strength of Sin is the Law from that breach the soul being as well left to Sin the Keeper as to Satan the Jaylor by the Fall and nothing but the Satisfaction of Christ put in to Divine Justice can remit the Authority of it yea though the power and filth in part be taken away by Sanctification yet it will break in again as an inmate and will at least get some out-room as pride in cloathes cozenage in dealings lust in the eye passion c. and bad work it makes where-ever it is Oh keep it at staves length Peter David Heman and others ever crack under it As you cannot build your Reformation upon unrepented sin So you should not make daily work for repentance by admitting sin which must be reformed Therefore to prevent this mischief you must exercise hatred against it as against an Enemy that cut the throat or would of your best Friends and yours also and pursue it with a deadly feud hate it in all the stock and linage of it my Child A little sin is sin down with it keep your guard and hate it in all the forrage that may maintain such an Enemy I mean in the occasions leading to it in which I might be large On with all your Armour speedily and when you find it hath bespotted you do as a good houswife with her linnen get a Washing-day I mean a Fasting-day out with it by hand laver bucking if it be a stain that gets through and through it will â—ut the next spring for bleaking I mean a sin premeditated as Davids a few common tears will not help there but extraordinary and the Blood of Christ above all Ask the Damned what they aile Sin sin they cry Ask the distressed Conscience Sin too Ask the Afflicted Sin For the Bulrush will not grow without mire That which crosseth the Law of God make thy greatest crosse that which divides you from the best Good call your worst Evil It made Christ to bleed to groan to die The Lord sprinkle thy Conscience with the Bloud of the Everlasting Covenant that you may not sin to death My dear Child 19. And next because bordering upon what went before I would add a case which so often even choice Christians are incumbred with and that is Their questioning all their works after manie years Experience and Profession and their Objections many against themselves as from sin before Conversion in Conversion after it repeated sins against Judgment Mercie Light Means yea even cutting Purses under the Gallows against all Examples and what not Nay it cannot stand with Gods honour to save c. though Isa. 55.8 answers all This therefore I would have you know that though it be not safe to dig at Foundations often lest we shake the Building so our great care is to have sound Foundations to build upon which in the general is Christ and other none can lay Make quick work and see you be in Christ and offer your Evidences to a discerning Friend or more and know that God hath limited his tenders of Grace to a day of this Life of the Gospel and of Conscience awakened therefore look out whilst it is To day Put by Spiritual sloth Cares of this World bosom Corruptions or what ever may hinder God is not bound to your limitings Were it not from his Mercy and and to leave every soul inexcusable why should the Lord give any time of Grace Remember this day ends suddenly How unworthy to put the Lord off till tomorrow and how retaliated See Prov. 1. 29 c. Your delayes rob your soul long of Comfort and you keep your self the longer out of Christ's service The nature of sin is poison do not stay till to morrow for an Antidote What got Lots Wife by lingring in Sodom the Lord must pull us out Nor can you plead any thing for hereafter which you may not now Oh to work to work and if you find it will not amount to Grace then cry mightily Ply the Lord with all the Promises of his Free-grace Isa. 55.1 Matth. 11. last Revel. 22.17 Isa. 53. the whole Chapter Jer. 3.1 and many more Tell the Lord none so vile as you none so good as Himself Tell him his Nature is Mercy he may be a gainer by his Grace However hang upon him living and dying in the use of all means Hos. 14.3 4 5. But if you have your share in Christ though hardly discerned make much of it you need walk very humbly very holily do not question continually as some do Psal. 18.1 Love the Lord who hath been your strength and will answer all thy hard questions dear Child 20. I add hereunto your Case under crosse Providences yea such as where Promises seem to speak one thing and Providence another Under which the best Saints have had great and strange sinkings of spirit For which you have Sibbs Burroughs and others to help My poor thoughts also are these for Case and Cure When Joh faints Joh 4.5 When David chides his soul Psal. 42. When Heman is even distracted Psal. 88.15 Jacob will not be comforted Gen. 37.35 and so divers This great Dissertion springs from either the overweening some Comforts we enjoy our overvaluing them breeds much trouble in the losse of them So David with his Absolom or from the surprizall being sudden and unexpected a prison at first uncouth in time easie and sweet where a mortified heart grows suited to it to this I could speak much or else it may spring from some secret weight God may put into this Change of Providence which we are not aware of and so the scale grows heavie with some Lead hanging at the bottom unseen a small thing troubles more than a greater the former we apply to our own strength in it but for the other to Gods Or lastly it may spring from the Dispensation it self As when the Crosse is heavie or multiplied or of long continuance or toucheth some noble part as wounds that touch the Liver Heart Brain c. Nay I must tell you when we make our Case worse than God doth as by our refusing the Lords Comforts which Jacob did Gen. 37. or where we let loose the Reins of Passion as David Oh my son my son c. Or when we drown all our present Enjoyments in that one crosse Providence which is too near the spirit of Haman who crost by Mordecai slights all his Favours at Court and dies upon the other Your Cure