Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	confound_v	conscience_n	see_v	23	3	2.1586	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39270	The vanity of scoffing, or, A letter to a witty gentleman evidently shewing the great weakness and unreasonableness of scoffing at the Christian's faith, on account of its supposed uncertainty : together with the madness of the scoffer's unchristian choice.	Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.	1674 (1674)	Wing E575; ESTC R3033	22,122	41

frailty of our common humanity and deride us not for those infirmities which are incident or may be to your selves Give us leave whilest we erre both so innocently and so beneficially to you to erre also peaceably If there be no life after this to be expected yet give us leave at least to make to our selves the same benefit of this now present as you desire to do that is to please our selves as much in the comfort of our innocent hopes as you delight your selves in your wicked enjoyments Certainly when you consider it well our error if it be one will appear to be your no inconsiderable advantage that Faith of ours which you make your sport makes you a quiet and peaceable fruition of your desires 'T is this that keeps us from envying your honours from breaking in upon your inclosures from disturbing your pleasures any other way than by our charitable admonitions wherein our design is not to abridge you in any part of this worlds happiness but to invite you to share with us if it be possible in the glories of the next If I mistake not now howsoever ignorant and foolish we may seem to be for our selves yet this our folly on this one account that it seeks your good no less than our own deserves your thanks not your censure and derision our present madness more befriending you than your own wisdom and surely our good wishes for your future happiness can do you as little hurt as you imagine our hopes can do good unto our selves You have already in part seen how much you are your own enemies in abusing your well-wishers and yet how much more disadvantagious to your selves are both your opinions and your practices how little either of honour or real satisfaction you shall ever be able to reap from them if true and what horrid miseries they will certainly bring upon you if false I am now to tell you Doth it become a Philosopher so great a master of reason as you are to profess a willingness to sit down and take up your rest in the midst of your doubts and settle in your self a firm resolution of adhering to that opinion which is so generally exploded without any farther search or examination Were the matters of which we now speak trivial and light such as those unprofitable niceties which are the sole business of too many curious wits and which be they true or false known or unknown are of equal concernment that is of none at all to mankind I should not blame but commend your indifferency but then the vain curiosity and indefatigable pains of these men in their inquisition into mere trifles and things of little or no use doth condemn your sloth and negligence in searching no farther into these things which you must needs grant of be of universal and eternal concernment This then is all the honour that you are like to gain hereby that the considering world looks upon you not as upon great wits but rather as on a company of poor baffled fools men of low soft and effeminate spirits who rather than indure to be at any more pains have chosen to sit down and languish in prepetual despair These Sir are the honourable thoughts which wise men have of you and now see if you can recompence this loss of reputation by any real satisfaction you can find to your selves in this your desperate course You know not you say what shall be hereafter and yet your choice is to live wickedly now What interpretation can this admit of but that you are resolved to do violence to your reason and strive with the variety of your vanities to confound your consciences and stifle your fears This is right childrens play you shut your eyes lest you should see what you are afraid of and would perswade your selves that so long as you see no body no body sees you As they when they are terrified by their nurses with stories of Spirits wrap themselves over head and ears in their bed-clothes and then fancy themselves safe enough or as I have heard of some condemned malefactors who drank themselves drunk when they went toward the gallows that they might not be sensible of their sufferings thus wisely do you sooth your selves up in your ungrounded conceits and swill your selves in all carnal jollities to free your selves from the terrors of a future Hell Give me leave to plead with you a little You confess you do not certainly know that there is no Heaven no Hell no future life of retribution If you do not certainly know that these things are not then must you needs admit of some doubts whether they be or no and grant that for ought you know to the contrary they may be Now doth not common reason instruct all men in matters doubtful and yet very weighty to be cantious to study their own safety all they can and to make choice of that wherein appeareth least of danger Fears and doubts may indeed make some fools desperate but they always make wise men wary and he that knows not what will be will yet in common prudence first diligently use all means of informing himself and where he cannot remove his ignorance he will wisely labour to improve his doubts into a provident forecast against all evils which he can imagine possible Where the event is dubious it ill becomes a wise man to rush forward at all adventures or resolutely to pitch upon that course which if there be a better and a worse will undoubtedly lead him into that he hath most cause to fear Where then I beseech you is that great wisdom you boast of For if it shall so fall out that these things at length appear to be as the Christian believes and you know nothing to the contrary but so they shall be then must you needs confess you have foolishly chosen your own destruction and he whom you now call fool will be found at last the only wise and happy man How think you will you then curse your own folly and wish ten thousand times to no purpose you had been so wise in time as to consider your latter end and that you had embraced this warning which now I give you to provide against that evil day which as yet you suppose only possible But if it so fall out that we at length appear to be deceived and none of these things follow which we expect when the end shall come we are assured that our condition can be no worse than your's If after death be nothing and death it self be it what it will be be common to us all and make no difference of persons if we that believe and you that believe not must die alike and rot to dirt like beasts that perish then as you shall neither feel the loss of your pleasures past nor retain any longer relish of them so neither shall we be sensible of the frustration of our hopes nor be troubled with remorse for our past