Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	body_n	let_v	soul_n	7,333	5	5.2669	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35030	A sermon preached before the King at White-hal [sic] April the 12th, 1674 by the Right Reverend Father in God, Herbert, Lord Bishop of Hereford.	Croft, Herbert, 1603-1691.	1676 (1676)	Wing C6975; ESTC R29286	12,510	34

a fond Dream of their own Brain viz. The Souls sleeping at death till the day of Judgment and then to rise again with the Body to receive the reward of good or evil They were as good tell us in plain terms the Soul dies with the Body for this sleep is so like death as I know not how to distinguish it from Death How a pure Spirit as the Soul divided from the Body is can fetch a sleep of one or two thousand years I cannot understand and I believe they as little Let them shew us what kind of sleep this is and some warrant in Scripture for it and then I shall willingly hearken to them and submit my Soul to sleep with theirs not otherwise For I shall not easily quit the comfort St. Paul gives us at death That we shall depart hence and be with Christ for which he desired to be dissolved not to enter into so dead a sleep as would make his condition no better than of a dead block He tells us also he was in a streight betwixt two Whether to stay and preach the Gospel to others or to depart and be with Christ which was far better for himself Surely he that had so passionate a zeal to gain Souls unto Christ would never have thought it far better to sleep a thousand years than to gain a thousand Souls Thus to dye was a dull stupid gain much disagreeing with his Active Soul and as much disagreeing with the clear current of Scripture What can be clearer than those words of our Saviour unto the Thief on the Cross This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise Which must needs be understood of his Souls living after the death of his Body on the Cross. For sure our Saviour took not the Thiefs Soul into Paradise to sleep with him but to rejoyce with him there Had Christ intended sleep he would rather have said This night thou shalt be with me in Paradise I suppose the main cause that moves them to this sleepy Imagination is Their Wisdom thinks it not reasonable that the Souls of men should at death receive the Recompence of Good or Evil in Heaven or Hell and thence come out again to the General Judgment having before past their Particular Judgment I wish these over-wise men would leave these matters to the Wisdom of God to determine for my part I shall determine no more than the Scripture plainly declares viz. That the Souls of good men after death have some happy being where with St. Paul they enjoy Christ frequently at least if not always The Souls of wicked men some miserable Being at a vast distance from the godly divided by an unpassable Gulf as Dives was from Lazarus but whether these places be the Heaven of heavens and the Hell of hells I will not now dispute but shall in a short time certainly know In the interim I rest satisfied with S. Paul's Assurance That death will be a gain and convey me to some place where I shall enjoy Christ my Blessed Redeemer We have yet another Generation of men who call themselves Christians and would be called Wits but I can call them neither they having no belief in the Promise of Christ for a future life but make a mock of this as an idle Dream 'T is strange that men who have so high a conceit of themselves should make use of their wit thus to debase themselves Certainly this is great folly God hath made Man but a little lower than the Angels by giving him an eternal Soul but they by denying the Eternity of the Soul make themselves as low as Beasts their Soul dying with their Body without hope of future life If you ask them a reason for their Opinion their Sense is their Reason they see no other life therefore they believe no other Really I could never yet hear any thing else objected Thus they believe according to Sense and live according to Sense very Beasts in all but stupendious Wits 'T is true when a Man dies and a Beast dies we see no more of man remaining than of the Beast But shall we be such Beasts as to make no use at all of our Reason Doth not our Reason evidently shew us that there is a vast difference betwixt our Soul and the Soul of Beasts by the many wonderful Arts and Sciences which man arrives unto of which Beasts are not capable in the least degree And we may farther urge the Metaphysical Speculations and Spiritual Contemplations of the Soul wholly independant of the Body which strongly proves the subsistency of the Soul independant of the Body as the Learned well understand For an Action presupposes the being of the Actor But this is an Argument too Scholastick for this Assembly therefore I shall not here enlarge upon it Though methinks these men who would be thought Masters of Wit and Reason should be ashamed of their Ignorance in this the Master-part of Reason But Beasts they would be and so let them be unfit to consort with knowing wise men who in all Ages all the World over had this belief of a future life which being so universal must needs proceed from the instinct of Nature which is nothing else but an inner light infused into the Soul of Man by God the Creator together with a feeling and pleasing expectation of future Felicity Thus far Heathens went But we Christians have a farther and much clearer light from our Saviour Christ who plainly taught this and evidently confirmed it by innumerable Miracles which he did in his life and chiefly by his rising again after death so fully attested Do not the Laws of God and Man in all Nations receive for truth whatever is witnessed by two or three But if twenty persons affirm upon Oath what they themselves have seen all twenty being men of unsuspected credit who then doubts the truth thereof Had any one of these perverse faithless Wretches an Estate to recover witnessed for them by twenty or ten or two sufficient Witnesses and should be deprived of it would they not make great out-crys of Injustice Have not we then most just cause to cry out against these unjust Judges that would deprive us of our heavenly Inheritance attested for us by twenty a hundred five hundred most credible persons who all at once were eye-witnesses of our Saviours being risen from the dead most whereof testified the same not with Oaths but with their Deaths and joyfully died in full assurance of this heavenly Inheritance And what these men were eye-witnesses of they declared unto others and so from hand to hand conveyed it for many hundred years together and in every year downwards from the Apostles hundreds and thousands continually attested the same by suffering many grievous Torments and cruel Deaths Was there ever any thing so attested in the whole World or was there ever any thing so perversly so madly denied Are not these men as St. Austin saith Miracles of Unbelief For really it seems