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	part_n	soul_n	20,019	5	5.7069	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52860	The great excellency, usefulness, and necessity of humane learning declared in a sermon, preached before the University, at Great St. Maries church in Cambridge, August the 7th. 1681 / Robert Neville ...	Neville, Robert, 1640 or 1-1694.	1681 (1681)	Wing N521; ESTC R10101	14,582	36

THE GREAT Excellency Usefulness And NECESSITY OF HUMANE LEARNING Declared in a Sermon Preached before the University at Great St. Maries Church in Cambridge August the 7th 1681. By Robert Neville B.D. Late Fellow of the King's Colledge in Cambridge And Moses was Learned in all the Wisdom of the Egyptians Act. 7.22 LONDON Printed for Benjamin Billingsley at the Printing Press under the Piazza of the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1681. To the Right Worshipful Sir Nicolas Miller Knight of Hide Hall in the County of Hertford Honoured Sir THough I am too sensible that the prefixing your name to this Discourse will look rather like Presumption than Respect and that I cannot hope for your acceptance of it without a manifest injury to your Judgement yet I have in that short time I have had the Honour to be known to you made such large Discoveries of your Goodness as not to doubt but it will so far Bribe your Judgement as to make it accept of that which it cannot approve especially when the principal end of its Dedication to you is to Congratulate that late Honour which his Majesty as a Mark of his particular favour hath so deservedly conferred upon you nor am I under any apprehension that I shall by this Publick Notice of it draw any Odium or Envy upon you since your being Mounted into the Saddle of Honour was not the Favour of Fortune but the Reward of your Exemplary Loyalty and Honour always sits so well upon Loyal Shoulders as that it rather attracts love and admiration than envy especially when attended with that great Modesty and Humility which have been so conspicuous in you since your ascent into the Sphere of Honour in imitation of the Stars above which the higher they are the lesser they are wont to appear Were I not as well assured of your great unwillingness to have your favours repeated as I have been sensible of your readiness to bestow them I should present you with such a Catalogue of my obligations to you as would swell this Epistle into a Volume but I will not in so high a nature disoblige you who have so infinitely obliged me Ansty Aug. 30. 1681. Honoured Sir Your faithful and humble servant R. Neville Prov. 19th the former part of the 2d verse That the Soul be without knowledge it is not good IT hath been deservedly Questioned by some whether they were not as much obliged to those that gave them Education as to those that gave them Being for if as the Philosopher saith we are born meer Animals afterwards made men we are so much the more indebted to those who thus improve and exalt our nature as arriving to the Excellency of our own Species is a Prerogative above that of being meer Creatures and there being not onely Infirmities of Body but of Soul It is as great Charity to apparel the Nakedness of the Soul as to Cloth the Body It is an Honourable Object to see the Reasons of other men wear our Liveries and their borrowed Understandings doe Homage to the Bounty of Ours and therefore those young branches of the tree of knowledge that thrive and grow in fruitful Nurseries of Learning and Education cannot but Present the hand that first planted them with their best fruits Upon such Considerations several of the most eminent Persons in the world have loaded their Tutors and Governours with the greatest Favours and Honours imaginable He who hath read that Alexander the Great the Universal Monarch of that Age paid a large portion of honour and Veneration to his Tutor Aristotle and made ampler acknowledgements of his Obligations to him than to Philip his father He who hath heard of that Decree of the Senate for a Publick Statue for Junius Rusticus procured by his Royal Pupil Marcus Antonius and what Honours the Emperor Trajan heaped upon Plutarch for those good Lectures he read to him and that the Emperour Gratian made his Tutour Ausonius Consul will be easily convinced that the most Heroick and noble Spirits have set a value upon those who were the Instructors and Guides of their first years to which I conceive they had no greater inducement than the consideration of the great unhappiness of those who are left in the dark Chaos of their original Ignorance which Learned and wise Solomon describes to us in these words of the Text That the Soul be without knowledge it is not good In which words there are these two General Parts First An Hypothesis or Supposition that the Soul may be without knowledge 2dly A Thesis or Positive Assertion of the great inconvenience and evil thereof exprest by a figure called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these words It is not good First on the first namely the Hypothesis or Supposition that the Soul may be without knowledge and that in these two Cases 1. When it dwells in an Unfit Body 2. When it wants fit Instruction And First The Soul may be without knowledge when it dwels in an unfit Body The Organs of the Body which the Soul imploys being as necesary in this state to produce its Operations as the Soul it self hence it is that in Children the Organs either from an excess of moisture or their smalness are indisposed for the vigorous exercise of the mind some strictures onely of Reason appearing as Presaging signs of what will be though mixt with much Obscurity but when the Organs are come to their just proportion and Temperament the Soul displays its strength and activity Both the Apprehension that fair Portal at which knowledge makes its Entry and the Memory that rich Treasury where 't is lockt up depend wholly upon the Disposition of the Brain and the Animal Spirits for the performance of their several Offices and as that Oxford Esculapius the learned Dr. * De anima brutorum Willis hath well observed mens parts and abilities are according to the number the activity and orderly motion of the Spirits it is from their different Mechanism or frame that men are dull or quick heavy or ingenious and we find by experience that when the Organs of our Bodies have been Untuned and our spirits wasted and discomposed by sickness our Souls cannot Act with their wonted vivacity but then our before teeming Invention becomes barren our Phansie which before soared aloft droops and hangs down the Wing then our memory looses its Retentive Faculty and our Notices of things run through as Water through a Sieve Thus Thucydides tells us in his Second Book that in the great Plague at Athens which happened in the second year of the Peloponnesian War many persons after their recovery were seized with such an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such an Oblivion of all things as that they neither knew themselves nor their Acquaintance their ransackt memory having lost its whole Treasury of knowledge But then Secondly A Second Case wherein the Soul may be without knowledge is when it hath wanted fit instruction The Natural Ornaments of the