Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A34359
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A consolatory letter upon the death of a daughter written after a philosophical manner by a gentleman of the university to his friend in the country.
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Gentleman of the university.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing C5930; ESTC R27913
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16,502
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26
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the Foetus in the Womb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Death to be the Birth to Life truly so called to a Life of Peace and Quietness in the happy Receptacles and Mansions of Spirits where the bright Day is never intercepted by Clouds and Darkness but an eternal Serenity overspreads the whole Face of Heaven Nay the barbarous Thracians and Scythians were not altogether estranged from this piece of Ancient Wisdom Valerius Maximus reporting of them that L. 1. c. â— 12. they used Feastings and publick Rejoicings at the Funerals of their Friends because they believed that when they died their Souls were released from the troublesome Circumstances of a calamitous Life and passed into more happy and blessed Regions You see then my Friend what little Cause you have to bewail the Death and Abreption of your dear Placidia from you who is not lost but taken into a higher Place and Degree in the City of the Great King The Bird of Paradise is uncag'd that she may take her flight to her Native Land She is gone to all her Friends Relations and Acquaintance that went hence in the Fear of God and the Exercise of a good Conscience who no doubt but met her with Joy and Triumph and after the unspeakable way that separate Souls discourse congratulated her safe Arrival to the Society of blessed Spirits which is thus set forth by the Oracle when consulted touching the Soul of Plotinus and its passage to the Happy State Ad Caetum jam venis almum Heroum blandis spirantem leniter auris Hâ—ic ubi amicitia est ubi molli fronte Cupido Laetitiâ replens liquidâ pariterque repletus Semper ab Ambrosiis foecundo è Numine rivis Vnde serena quies castorum dulcis amorum Illecebra ac placidi suavissima flamina Venti Which I find thus Englished And now you 're come to th' Happy Quire Of Heroes where their blessed Souls retire Where softest Winds do as soft Joys inspire Here dwells chast Friendship with so pure a Flame That Love knows no Satiety or Shame But gives and takes new Joys and yet is still the same Th' Ambrosian Fountains with fresh Pleasures spring And gentle Zephyrus does new Odours bring These Gifts for inoffensive Ease are lent And both conspire to make Love innocent If it were a mighty Pleasure to Socrates to think that when he left the Body he should go to Aeacus and Minos to Orpheus and Musaeus and all those Holy Souls that fill and make up the Chorus of Immortal Love What enravishing Joy What pleasing Emotions of Spirit should it beget in you to be assured that Placidia is gone to Abraham Isaac and Jacob to the Holy Prophets and Apostles and to all that have done good in their Generations but above all to Jesus who loved and redeemed her with his own Blood I know it is a common Argument and frequently made use of upon such Occasions as this to tell you that she is removed from all those Evils a Terrestrial Body is obnoxious to yet hath it great Truth and Weight in the Consideration of it For though the Days of Man upon Earth be few and his Life contracted into a narrower space than in the first Ages of the World when Nature was in her youthful Gaiety yet they are full of Misery and Calamity and every Act of Life is divided into many Scenes of Sorrow We begin our Days with weeping and the first Tribute we pay to the Light of the Sun is to present him with a Tear and watry Eyes as a sure Presage of our future Misery And if we out-live the Chances of Childhood and arrive to the Exercise of our discriminative Faculties and make our choice of that variety of Instances the World presents unto us we go from a less to a greater degree of Affliction For whereas before we could only grieve and sigh under a present Pain now our Grief is redoubled by reflecting on it and we are the more miserable by knowing that we are so Those very Diseases that carry a little Infant with quietness to its Grave force us into effeminate Ejulations and Impatience and all because our Apprehensions and Reflexive Acts are greater than a Childs Should we view Man in his declining State when his Sun is setting and leaving the Horizon of Time and we shall find old Age like a teeming Womb full of Miseries and Sorrows a rough and uneven Path wherein Death becomes a welcome Respite and breathing Place to recover our Spirits wearied with the Troubles of this Life and inables us to resume our progress to Immortality In a word corroding Cares disappointments of our Hopes and Expectations Crosses and doleful Circumstances Sicknesses and Diseases make up the summ of Humane Life Besides this when a good Person reflects upon the Depravity and Wickedness of the World the stench whereof is ready to choak him he is sensibly pained and cannot but testifie his inward Grief by his Tears But now Death removes him from all the Objects of his Dislike and Aversation and the Grave puts an end to all Humane Miseries There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary be at rest There the Prisoners rest together they Job 3. 17 18. hear not the Voice of the Oppressor And as for Moral Evils there is an end to them likewise For holy Souls are out of the reach of the sly Tempter nor can the crooked Serpent wind himself again into the Celestial Paradise But after all it is not my Meaning nor Design to persuade you to an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or putting off natural Affection nor by a Stoical Stubbornness of Mind to become insensible of your Affliction For the better any Man is the more passive is his Constitution either for Joy or Grief and the more subject to these harmless Passions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the best and most Heroical Persons are the readiest upon a sad Accident to overflow with Tears Thus the Son of God show'd the tenderness of his Spirit at the Grave of Lazarus and could not withhold his Tears Jesus wept Nor would I have you to forget Placidia and cast her Image quite out of you Mind as the manner of too many is who when they have interr'd the Bodies of their Friends and the Solemnity is over think themselves no more concerned in them than if they had never been For both Nature and Religion allow us to remember them with all that Esteem and Honour that is due to superior Beings whom the Lord of the Universe has grac'd with signal Marks of his Favour in the Regions of Paradise Whenever therefore you admit her into your Thoughts let it not be as she was in her earthly Tabernacle with all those Disadvantages and Alterations that Death made in it when he was pulling it down but rather represent her to your self in those bright Robes in which she converses with blessed Spirits where the external Shape faithfully answers the inward Pulchritude
of the Soul and the yielding Matter is framed according to the beautiful Idea presented by the Mind to the Plastick Life Here are the living Rays of Vertue which if it ever could be visible to the Eye must be discovered in the lovely Countenances and graceful Motions of these Holy Souls This was it which made Cato in Tully's Book de Senectute as if he had seen something already of the State of those Immortal Genii so desirous to hasten to them O praeclarum diem cùm ad illud Divinum Animorum concilium caetumque proficiscar cùmque ex hâc turbâ colluvione discedam O glorious day when I shall go to the great Assembly of blessed Souls and be delivered from this Crowd and that Dungeon wherein I live And Cicero elsewhere tells us that nothing De consolat was more pleasant to him than when he considered and contemplated the future State of the Soul to be confident and assured of the eternal and happy State of his Daughter And if this were so to him who lived upon the strength of naked and thin Reason what should it be to us who have as sensible and palpable a Demonstration of the Souls future Felicity as can be desired in the Resurrection and Ascension of our Blessed Saviour With what Transports of Joy should we meet our approaching Fate when we are leaving this Region of Malediction wherein our Souls are entomb'd in our Bodies And when we ascend to those Immortal Mansions where our Joy is never interrupted by any Cloud of Sorrow where Love is without any Dissimulation or Lust and where all is Life and Happiness for evermore And truly it seems evident to me that Placidia had some Prelibations of this glorious State which vigorously possessed her Soul even in the very last moment of her Life when opening her Eyes that were more than half o'ercast and clouded with the Shadow of Death and looking upon her mourning Relations with a chearful Smile she took her last Farewel of them and all the World When all other Powers and Faculties of the bodily Life were fallen asleep this she left as the only Testimony then remaining of that exalted sense she had of those Heavenly Pleasures she was going to enjoy Here it was indeed that she excell'd her self and here show'd the Gallantry of her intemerated Youth and how far true Vertue and Religion will prevail above all earthly Things There is a certain Greatness in the mind of Man which Christianity came not to extinguish but to confirm and advance by better Arguments than the choicest Ethnick Philosophy could ever furnish us withal whereby a Man is carried out in an even Calmness of Spirit not only to atchieve great Things but to a noble sufferance and a Will purely conformable to the Will of Heaven in the most calamitous Accidents and such as the most nearly touch a Man's self under a full assurance that all Things are ordered by a benign and righteous Providence which as it sorts all Beings according to the previous Dispositions of their Minds so takes the most particular Care of vertuous Souls And if a Person may as there is no doubt of it double the Providence of Heaven in this Life by the constant and sincere Practice of Religion and Vertue your poor Placidia went not away from hence without a double Guardiance it being doubtful whether Goodness were more her choice than inspired into her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a divine Fate as the Platonists speak which as it conducted her into this World for the Trial of her Vertues so carried her off happily to obtain the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reward of all her Labours and Contentions from a Judge as kind and merciful as just Which of all Things in the World ought not only to allay your Grief but administer a mighty occasion of rejoicing in being under God the Author of the Life and Being of so happy a Creature that is now gone to the blessed Regions of Holy and Immortal Spirits Indeed if there were an utter extinction and going out of Being when we die or that our Souls slept with their Bodies in the cold Clods of the Earth then I know not whether we should have Tears enough left to bewail our Children whom an unkind Fate bereaves us of in the Flower of their Years But both these proceeding from dark Melancholy and a too fond love of these earthly Bodies can make no Impression upon a truly Religious and Philosophical Spirit who would sooner endure the tearing of his Limbs asunder than suffer such heavy and cold Conceits to entomb his Mind I shall not go about to prove the Immortality of the Soul from Philosophical Principles since you know very well where it is treated of in that kind on purpose but only affirm that the contrary overthrows the whole Design of Religion which way of arguing I shall briefly touch upon not knowing but this Letter may come into less skilful hands than your own If in this Life only we have hope in Christ says the Apostle we are of all Men most miserable If all the 1 Cor. 15. 19. Advantages we reap from the Gospel are terminated in this Life and our hope of future Happiness end with our few and evil days we that are Christians are the most unhappy Persons the most proper Objects of Compassion in the World To what end or purpose came the Gospel Or was it the Design of that everlasting Goodness which is so plentifully diffused and spread over the whole Creation to make our short Life a continued Act of Calamity and Sorrow Can Heaven 's righteous Ruler take pleasure in betraying the innocent Credulity of the most harmless Men in the World Shall the wicked live by Rapine and Injustice and freely enjoy whatever Pleasure their Natures are capable of and shall only Vertue and Righteousness be the unhappy Objects of Misery and Affliction If this be the Order of that eternal Justice which rules and governs the World sure Goodness Righteousness and Equity are but idle Names and 't is our Fancies that have made the distinction between Good and Evil. How much more blessed are they who never heard the sound of the Gospel or having heard it stopt their Ears against those alluring Charms than those that have lived in a faithful Obedience to it and waded even through a Sea of Blood to their long expected Joy and are at last deprived of it The Epicurean Doctrine Let us eat and drink for to morrow we die let us take our Portion of good things while we are here and live jovially for this is our Portion and our Lot is this were both noble and pleasant if this were true that our Spirits vanished like the fleeting Air when we depart this Life But our Hopes are grounded upon a deep and firm Foundation for if we believe there is such a Being as God in the World any Providence presiding over the Affairs of Mankind his