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	soul_n	understand_v	5,748	5	6.7898	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49830	A sermon preached at the funeral of the honourable Christopher Sherard, Esq., eldest son to the right honourable Bennet Lord Sherard, February the 28th, 1681 by T.L. ...	Laxton, Thomas.	1682 (1682)	Wing L744; ESTC R34511	18,144	36

blessed Exchange shall we Mourn for their glorious preferment whom we profess to live with God Spei nostrae ac Fidei prevaricatores Simulata ficta fucata videntur esse quae dicicimus Cyprian What difference in this respect between the Hopeless Heathen and the Professed Christian St. Cyprian thinks it incongruous to Mourn for them in Black that follow the Lamb in White This perhaps may seem a Flower of Rhetorick but certainly Excessive Sorrow shews us to be of a defective Faith That Faith can hardly be thought sincere unto which we walk so contrary in Practice Especially seeing a very Heathen could say That we do not amittere but praemittere not lose them but send them before us in Hope as our Faith further teacheth us to follow and communicate with them in the same Glory and Blessedness And this leads me to the next General part of the Text the First Reason against Excessive Sorrow for the Dead the Nature of Death It is a sleep Sleep in phrase of Scripture admits of divers senses for we find First The sleep of Nature A binding of the Senses Somnus Naturae a Rest cessation and suspention of them from their Actual operations and consequently Ligatio sensuum of all the Members of the Body from executing their Natural offices and functions Thus Adam slept in Paradice Jesus in the Ship Peter in the Prison 2. The sleep of Sin A secure Spiritual Lethargy Somnus Cul●ae Eph. 5.14 1 Thess 5.6 Awake thou that sleepest Let us not sleep as do others but let us watch and be sober that is Arise from the Grave of Infidelity and Sin unto the Life of Faith the Life of Righteousness and then to keep the Eyes of our Souls continually waking lest we be inveigled by the Devil or the Worlds Temptations 3. The sleep of Grace Somnus Gratiae A holy Peace and Tranquility of Mind arising from the apprehension of Gods favour in Christ I will lay me down and sleep If David can attain a glimpse of the light of Gods Countenance then he will lay him down and sleep 4. Somnus Sepulcri The sleep of the Grave The long sleep of Death when the Body lying in the Bed of Dust doth rest until it be awakened by the Sound of the last Trumpet Now to prevent Error and Mistake this Sleep is not to be conceiv'd of the separated Soul as some have vainly thought supposing it to be not only without Organical by a bodily Instrument action but without all Action Not considering that the Soul even in the state of Union and Commerce with the Body hath her proper and Immaterial acts of Thinking Reasoning Judging c. Yea the most perfect Acts of the Soul are exercised when the Bodily Senses are tied up as in Extasies and deep Contemplations Besides the Spirits of Men in and after their Transmigration are still Spirits but without motion and activity they would be no Spirits For the Nature and Essence of a Spirit consists in Act and it is not obscurely intimate Rev. 5.12 that they are employed in Magnifying and praising God Understand this Sleep therefore to be of the Body in the Grave a Metaphor very frequent in Holy Scripture Deu. 12.2 Many of them that sleep in the dust of the Earth shall awake Of divers of the Kings of Israel and Judah 't is said that they slept with their Fathers St. Paul reproving the abuse of the Holy Sacrament in the Corinthian Church For this cause saith he many are sick and weak among you and many sleep And St. Stephen having commended his Spirit into the hands of Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. 7.59 fell asleep A Similitude used among the Heathen Hence their distinction of the Greater and Lesser Sleep Homer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One calls it Deaths Brother Another Deaths Sister Another Deaths Image Of one Gorgias it is said That being sick and heavy unto Death and very sleepy being ask'd how he did Virgil. Stulte quid est somnus gelidae nisi mortis Imago Jamme somnus incipit tradere fratri suo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 replied Now sleep begins to deliver me up to his Brother Death These although Ignorant of a Resurrection could easily find in Death the similitude of a Sleep Hence our Graves are called Beds and our Churchyards Sleeping-places or Dormitories And indeed if Death be a Sleep the Grave must needs be the Bed Isai 57.2 Unto this may fitly be applied that of the Propht They shall enter into peace they shall lie down upon their Beds each one walking in his uprightness Divers Reasons may be given of this Similitude I shall pitch upon two First Sweetness of Rest Secondly Certainty of Resurrection 1. Sweetness of Rest Rev. 14.13 Blessed are the Dead which die in the Lord for they rest from their Labours Man is born to affliction as the sparks fly upwards No Family Age Sex or Condition of Men but hath experience of Humane Miseries A heavy yoak is laid upon the Sons of Men from the day of their Birth unto the day of their Death Afflictions like Waves come rolling one upon another the end of one misery is the beginning of another Hear we not one crying My belly my belly with the Prophet another My head my head with the Shunamites Son One My Father my Father with Elisha another My Son my Son with David One complaining of Cruel Enemies another of False Friends One of Sore Labour another of Hungry Meals One of Grief in the Body another of Sin in the Soul Here lies Jacob in the Fields there Joseph in Prison Here Jeremy in the Dungeon there David in the Wilderness Daniel among the Lions the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace It is not unsignificant that Nature sends us into the World Weeping a sad presage of our future Calamity Such our Ingress such our Progress through this Vale of Tears So that Man and Misery seem to be born under one Planet If Man had not been Sorrow upon Earth had never been And as we suffer many Evils so we do more the Flesh continually lusting against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh so that the good which we would we do not and the evil which we would not that we do From all these this Sleep in my Text gives us a sweet discharge the Soul carried into Abrahams Bosom And what is the Fathers Bosom but a place of Repose unto the Child The Body laid up in a Couch of Sacred rest and security sweetned sanctified seasoned and perfumed by the most precious Death and Burial of Christ Cubile in quo mollius dormit quisquis durius se en hâc vitâ gesserit where our sleep shall be sweeter as our labour hath been harder The Body no sooner dead but it feels nothing the Soul no sooner fled but it feels it self happy 2. Certainty of Resurrection Indeed more certain than we are