Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	father_n	holy_a	nature_n	8,877	5	5.8462	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38449	Englands vanity or The Voice of God against the monstrous sin of pride, in dress and apparel wherein naked breasts and shoulders, antick and fantastick garbs, patches, and painting, long perriwigs, towers, bulls, shades, curlings, and crispings, with an hundred more fooleries of both sexes, are condemned as notiriously unlawful. With pertinent addresses to the court, nobility, gentry, city and country, directed especially to the professors in London / by a compassionate conformist.	Compassionate conformist.	1683 (1683)	Wing E3069; ESTC R32945	62,360	146

well entitle me to the Good Repast I I have found among you and so I bid you adieu I am afraid it will endanger most of the Societies in the City to provide for the mnltitudes of his Trade and Finery that stand in as great need of a Dinner as he who are Breathing Vivifications of that notorious Truth By means of an Whorish Woman a Man is brought to a piece of Bread Among the Heresies August de Heres that arose very early in the Church there started out a Sect called the Paterniani possibly the Spawn of the filthy Gnosticks whose opinion was that the upper Parts of a mans Body were made indeed by God but the lower Parts from the Girdle they held was made by the Devil and very fond they grew of their fancy which they thought gave them a Liberty to do with the Devils part what they pleas'd so long as they reserv'd the rest unto God Who must excuse them if they imploy that wherein he had no title unto the service of the Devil and lust 'T is to be fear'd this Heresie insensibly has crept in among us and gotten too generall an hold and it were well if it had not improv'd and encroach'd beyond it's first limits but sure it seemes to battle here in it's own Ordure and sport it self as in it's own Element While it presumes to invade the poor remains it has left unto God and hardly left him an Eye or a Lip for his service The Tongue the Trumpet of his Honour is now as St. James said set on fire of Hell and and belching out the Infernal Vapours with Aetna as furiously as the Tayle is reaking with the smoak and steames of impurity and filth And which is most pitteous to behold our very Ladies so far obeying the Apostle yield the more abundant Honour to the less Honourable parts which these Hereticks say were made by the Devil while they are grown so Universally careless of Gods that like a solitary Mansion they desert it all Naked and Unfurnish'd and leave it all Bare to shift for it's self as it can and declare to all mankind how ready they are to surrender possession to the Devil 'T is pitty Ladies should be Hereticks too out their Naked Necks and Shoulders are undeniable Evidences of their Apostacy and Guilt And acquaint us how little they fear'd that dreadful Judgment denounc'd against the wanton Dames of Syon for the pride of their stretched-out Necks and tinckling Feet that they hold it a Judgment if that Judgment be not frequently repeated upon them while they are half underess'd already to it and defie the worst that God or man can do against them Of Naked Necks and Shoulders AN Impudenee abominated by the very Light of Nature No sooner sayes Tertullian did our first Parents perceive themselves Naked but they sought out for some Covering though a poor one And the very Arabian Women saith he will rise up in Judgment against this Generation Quod non caput modo sed faciem quoque ita totam tegunt ut uno oculo liberato corteatas sunt dimidia frui Luce quam totam faciem prostituere Who rather than they will prostitute the honour of their Countenances to publick danger much less their Necks and Shoulders do furle them in their Mantles all over and allow but a peeping-hole for one Eye to guide them in the way The Roman Sulpicius was so far affronted to meet his wife in publick without her Vail that he devorced her for that Impudence so impossible did he think such a looseness could consist with Vertue and she that departed from the Grace of her Modesty must take leave of the Honour of his Bed too How have the the Primitive Fathers Thundred against this insufferable shamelesness of bare Bodies as if wholly irreconcileable to the reverence and severity of the Christian Religion Where is the Dispensation we have gotten for it in these days Can our Ladies shew any Lay down thy Pen Tertullian and prescribe no more Rules for Womens behaviour and bashfulness Here are a sort of things called Christians of a new Form that scorn thy Arguments to the unfashionable practice and exercise of Vertue tho thou hast told them plain enough That the nakedness of their Breasts is Adultery and that it 's possible such as go so may be honest but very few that see them believe it And thou Father Jerome who once most justly didst upbraid the loose Jovinian for entertaining an Army of these new fashioned Amazons Habet in castro Amazonas viros ad Labadinem provocates Mamma exerta brachio Rado Who with their naked Breasts strutting out and Armes tuck'd up to the very shoulders did in that posture seem rather to challenge Combatants into the Fields of Venus than make any shew of fighting vnder the Banner of a Crucified Saviour Let that passion cease now holy Father for he has gotten all the World into his Camp Who will make thee know Christianity can connive at those Libertinisms indulge against those Severities thy froward Spirit did ever abound with And why hast thou rail'd against bare Necks As the flames that comsumed Youth the Incentives of Lust and the never failing Ensignes of an Impudent Mind What a storm wilt thou raise over thy sacred Head and provoke thy excellent Volumes to be doom'd to the fire their holy Leaves to be sacrificed to the humour of Womens Pride And what was thy Project incomparable Chrysostome to enter those Lists with the Ladies of thine Antioch Who dared to sit down under the droppings of thy slowing Lips and the showres of thine Eloquence with their naked Bodies as if they design'd to debauch the Purity of thy holy Affections and Soul Oh what a Storm did thy fiery Zeal raise to set them in a trembling What do ye come hither into the House of God as to a Play Do you come into the Sanctuary of your Maker to make your Conquests here And here to satisfy your Sensuality Do you approach hither to attaque even God too What does all this People this soft and wanton delicacy this affected nakedness become the estate and condition of such who could have mercy for their Sins Are these the Dispensations and Postures of Mourners and Penitents Surely the bloud of their Hearts started up into their Face and Necks and all purpled their very shoulders when the astonishing Thunder fell upon them But yet why Golden Father wast thou so un-Courtly and down-right to tell those Naked Dames that the very Devil sate upon their very Shoulders and Pearch'd himself upon the little Mounts of their exposed Breasts hopping as a Bird from one to tother and greatly pleasing himself with the Rayes they had set out for him Sure thine ayme was to affright them out of their sins But alas all this will not do tho they might well be scar'd out of their Wits with the very thought of having a Devil in their Bosomes It were endless

Glory from the Spoiles of her Honour And are not these cursed Vanities as so many Ravishers that fall foul on and violate your Virgin affections from God while some of you ignorantly believe there is little ●anger in those fatal haggs and others of you consent heartily to them and wipe off from Amnon the guilt and dishonour of the Rape till at last having marr'd you from ever partaking of the felicities of the Celestial Nuptials he first bolt you out from his own embraces and the shame confine you to a desolate Estate with the mournful Thamar sitting sad and solitary in some melancholly corner of her Brother Absoloms House But happy were you if in a provident foresight of so Tyrannous Cruelty you would presently do what she did too late Rend your Gawdy Coats and put ashes on your heads and cry for revenge to Heaven against Pride the Deflowrer of your Souls your undressing from vanity would be so profitable a Nakedness that were you to walk up and down in the Raggs your Repentance had rent into Tatters the shame would be infinite Glory if weigh'd with the confusion that will one day surprise you for the guilt of your insufferable Impudence and Folly When the Israelitish Dames gave Aaron their Jewels to make them a God with Holy writ descanting on that Act saith that thereby he had made them Naked to their Shame But was this Nakedness from the want of an Neck-Lace or an Eare-Ring Alas no they had put off a God to put on a Beast and turned their Glory into the Similitude of a Calf that eateth hay And those who shall undress from their Strength above and strip off the Spirit of Glory that would rest upon them to prank themselves up in the beauties of Created Lustre and shine shall find their Shoulders as Naked as yours bare on purpose to receive the lashes of Vengeance which the Executioner Justice will lay on with severity and mercilesly multiply upon them But Ladies why is Mary Magdalen set out in the Gospel the most notorious Example of sin and Grace but to let you know that her new Lover who had set into Joynt her broken Soul and cag'd up her wandring affections in his own Bosome is as ready to Act miracles for you too and discover to you the Charms of a Saviour which a Legion of other Pretenders can never pretend to Court you with And though your Innocency suggest that you stand in less need of his favour than She yet if Scriptures convince you there are Adulteries of the Breast which you repeat every day and others of the Eye and Heart which you tempt your Admirers to as frequent guilt of I fear you will want little less weight of Sope to wash away your Crimes with and while they wear the Crimson Dye will require the very Heart Blood of a God to whiten you into Snow And so far as you rest unconvinc'd of their Danger so long are you still unhumbled for their Guilt and by the same distance kept from the means of a Recovery so that while the groseness of her Lewdness the festring of her Sores spur'd her on to hasten after remedy and ease your Dead Flesh for want of Anguish insencibly betray 's you to hugg your disease that as some drilling consumptions still flatters you on into hopes of life when God knows the staring out of your Shoulder-bones tell all the World how near the poor Skelleton hastens into Dust and the Spirit within it unto Judgment Yet ere you go Contemplate on Her who so pittied her self that Seven Devils could not keep her from addressing a Saviour and if you would cover your Necks you might be welcome too for ought I know but should you appear in His presence in the lascivious garb you commonly present your selves abroad in His Glorious Purer Eyes that cannot endure to behold Iniquity and are as a flame of Fire would doubtless flash out wrath and death into your shameless hearts whose Vanity promps you to so profligate a dress as would infinitely incense even the meekest Spirit of Jesus who yet was condiscending enough to the meanest of your sex in the decorums of decency and due prostration of humility and a mortified sence of their wants And though the poor Syrephaenician was a little roughly handled at first yet the Dog was not sent away with Crums only but carried home with her the whole Loaf of Mercy History tells us of Pope Benedict the Eleventh the Son of a Peasant and a Catholick is my Author his Mother being brought unto him in a Rich and Sumptuous Habit with hopes of being more gratefully received by the splendid appearance she made before him he turning away his Eyes said He could not acknowledg that Woman for his Mother but afterwards returning in her Rustick Attire he then acknowledged her and yeilded her all the Rights of a good Son And surely He who rejecting all the glittering Ladies of the Earth Respected the low Estate of a poor Hand-maid Consecrating her Virgin Womb the dressing-House wherein he Swath'd himself up into Humanity first into a Sanctuary for His Honour for Nine whole Months together and afterwards Blessed Her Breasts that gave him Suck hath thereby proclaim'd to all the World how far his Sacred Heart prefers the Humble Cells of a pure and Virtuous Mind before all the Tapsteries of State and the painted Breasts of the Flaunting Gallants who as Father Chrysostome says are rather the Lodges of Devils than a Saviour Alas Ladies His Holy Eyes have been feasted with the Glorious Prospects of Triumphing Virgins Courting the very Torturing Flames to uncloath them into Spirit and Immortallity wherein they might enjoy their Dearest Lord while himself has kindly descended into the Fiery Chariot to them to drive with greater ease these welcome Guests into their Eternal Palaces While alas you are so far from the Ambition of being Clothed upon with that House which is from Heaven that you will not cloath your Earthly Tabernacle into that Decency and Holy Form as might invite him to mark it up for an Habitation of his Spirit And if you will not Sacrifice a Lust to the Glory of his Cross how would you Sacrifice your Flesh to it And if you will not throw off a vain and condemned Custome by all the Holy Saints in the world how would you put on the Pitch'd-Coat of Martyrdome which Nero clapt on the backs of the more faithful Adorers of the Blessed Jesus to make them burn the better in That was Tunica molesta the Troublesome Coat indeed unto them When you cry out for the liberty of your shoulders because it makes for your ease They were contented to double their Torments and valued not to be scalded as well by the pitch as the Flames With trembling and horrour may you remember the Great Redeemer hanging Naked upon the Cross That very Nakedness rendering his Death doubly sorrowful and shameful to him while the rude Souldiers were unconcernedly

as these that great St. Austin in one of his Epistles to Possidius gives him this necessery charge Tom. 2. Epist 37. ad Possid Nolo ut de Ornamentis Auri vel vestis preproperam habeas in prohibendo sententiam Be not rash in passing too hasty a Judgment against the Ornaments of the Rich And some perhaps will but smile at the Decree of an ancient Councel of the Church assembled at Gangra That anathematizes those who shall be so rude and audacious to censure or control the Apparrel of great and superiovr Persons Qui cum Reverentia Birrhis usi fuerint and the ground of that Curse saith Balsamon was this Because such are cloathed not propter molliciem sed propter professionem not from any Luxury but distinction Be not jealous Reader that I have forgotten my design or am become Prides Advocate 'T is every where seen that Platoe's rich Gown covers a more humble mind than the Cynicks Frieze Pride is a disease that breads in course and branney Spirits the very Scrapings of dame Natures trough and blisters ever from the corruptest blood 'T is Humility is the Glory of the Great and the Noble their only unalterable Dress that is ever in fashion amongst them The very Rubies they wear would wax pale at the draught of that Venom and Pearls themselves would blush for shame at the imputation of such a Foppery What need such to swell that are so Great already or to aspire to a sublime Height when they are born on the Hills of Excellency and break into life like that Emperour Diadumenus with a Diademe of Honour on their forheads and whom the first light salutes into the World as happy as Great Thus while Right Honourable I apologize for you and pay but the Tribute your Vertue and State calls for from every humble Pen. I have plotted all along to merit from you the Innocent Liberty of Insinuating in the most prostrate and submissive posture of Address the following considerations for good Noble minds to contemplate First That as you are fixed by the Generous and only distinguishing bounty of God your great Maker ours in the highest Orbe and to a more abstructed Degree of Happiness and State in the World than were others Licenced to bear a greater Sway and Port and to appear with all your pompous Traines drawing that eyes of the Universe after you by your Gallantry and splendour of Life So that your Honours would ever Remember to give all this but its right Name and the same which the Holy Ghost gives it Acts 25. 23. Where an whole Bench of Great Ones and one of them a King with all their Attendants and Glory appear'd to dazle the eyes of a poor Prisoner at the Bar who yet by the Spirit and Power of the God that spake by him made the best of them tremble as he sate calls all that Lustre But a meer Phantacy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A very Gleam and Vain Shew that appeared and vanished together and not so much as the Shaddow of the truer Glory which has weight indeed and is massie exceedingly so and eternal too And this the Royal Prophet well experienced when he left behind him that very proper Lesson for Persons of your Noble Order to meditate on Man in his best estate is altogether Vanity Nor is it unworthy your profoundest thoughts to consider what little Courtship the God of Glory has used towards some very eminent Personages of the Earth by the contemptible characters he has stamped upon them in the sacred Records The Great Antiochus who for his Magnificence was stiled Epiphanes or the Illustrious passes off the stage with the Ignominious impress of a Vile Person Dan. 11. 21. such it seems in Heavens Accounts notwithstanding his worldly Greatness Herod gains no more from our Saviour than the sutable Title of a Fox who so greedily sucked the Blood of the Innocent Baptist Those who push the Innocent with the hornes of oppression are very congenially termed the Bulls of Bashan Jehoiakim Jer. 22. 28. an ill Prince is shav'd into the despicable cut of Coniah as one unworthy to fill up the leaves of his sacred Book with the full sylables of his Name But above all how remarkable is the crowding of at least forty Dukes of the progeny of Esau whom God hated into one short Chapter justling them together three or four into one line seven or eight of them into two Duke Teman Duke Omar Duke Zepho Duke Kenaz c. their whole story lost in the ayre of an empty Title their persons and hopes entred together in the dark vault of eternal Oblivion While yet above a dozen chapters are proved in the deciphering out the Excellencies of but one younger Son of a Plain man that dwelt in Tents and give us the exact memories of his whole life and actions to the Grave Gen. chap. 37. to 50. And the Almighty God make your Honours as Pious and Good as that famous Joseph and your Noble Consorts infinitely more Virtuous than his impure and unkind mistriss Who as if his unnatural Brethren had not shewn cruelty enough to him by stripping him of one Coat and sending him into Exile She must conspire too and tear from him another dismissing him all cold into Prison clad onely in the vest of divine Favour and his own innocency yet anon breaking out into a resplendency outshining the Nobles of the whole Court when we find him wrapt in the Royal Ornaments and the finest Linnen of Egypt Nor had I mentioned this Had it not been the perfect Mirror of your Honours own real story Who must as certainly be devested from all your rich and gay coloured coats that creates so great an Envy in the eyes of the world though the particular Cognizances of your great Fathers kindness and your desolate Bodies sent Captives into the dungeon of death If therefore now ye shall carefully buckle on the secure Coat-Armour of faith and purity to fence your glorious souls from the repeated attempts this Egyptian strumpet the World shall make upon your Chastities Then shall ye undoubtedly most triumphantly appear at the Resurrection of the Just Cloathed with the bright rayes of your Saviours Righteousness and Shining as the Sun for ever and ever But if which God forbid you shall suffer your Noble and more Sublimated Spirits to melt away in the Riots and Luxury of a meritorious bewitching World and this Circe to charm you into the killing slumbers of security and death should you pass into an ungrateful and slighting neglect of him whose goodness hath so deeply oblig'd you by the many rich demonstrations of his bounty and kindness then though you should here exalt your selves as the Eagle and Build your Nests among the Stars yet thence will God surely cast you down into Contempt and lay your Honour in the dust Though the whole Creation here be rifled for the furniture of your Tables though the Indian Rocks resign up their sparkling

tricked up in the most excessive Curiosity of Attire and I was surpriz'd when I found that Cornelius a Lapide in his Comment on Timothy has gotten the story by the end Mistress saith he vnless God give you Hell for all this Pains and Labour of Dress Verily He will do you great Injury But what said Old Plautus A Woman and a Ship are never sufficiently rigg'd up therefore said he if any Man want work or business for his mony Let him get him a Ship or a Wife Yet Plutarch tells us that Phocian the Athenian General was Singularly happy in this who when a great Lady of Jonia came to Athens to pass a visit on her and shew'd her all the Rich Jewels and Precious stones of her Cabinet But saith this Lady All my Riches and Jewels is my Husband Phocion Indeed those Athenians were a politick People and car'd very little that their women should bare away the spoiles of their Estate who therefore had Officers on purpose who were to order the Apparrel for women and to take care that no one might wear any thing unbecoming her Place or Degree and these were called Gyneconomi A Committee that sate on the Female affayrs to keep them in due Moderation and Order Very much wanted in England The like Power had the Ephori to correct the Spartan Extravagancies and I confess the Laws of Licurgus for youth especially were so choice and remarkable that the very reading of them would make us reflect on our own impudencies when as my Author tells me the very young men of the City were reduced to so high a degree of Civility and Modesty that passing through the Streets on their Lawful Occasions they would wrap themselves up in their Cloaks not stand prating to every one they met nor Gaze up and down but kept their very eyes fixt upon the ground by which means in a while the masculine Sex excelled in all bashfulness and gravity the very choicest perfections of the Feminine Their Voices were no more heard than if they had been Statues of Stone neither were the young Damosels more chast in their Chambers than were those young men as they walked in the Streets And does not this make thee blush Reader to consider the Rudeness the Incivility the Insolence the the Wild and Immodest Gestures and Deportment not of the Males only in our City but the Loosness the Staring and Gaping the Idle and Dissolute Carriage of the very Virgins and Young Ladies who set themselves out on purpose to be pick't up and Gaz'd on and turn their back upon every passenger as it were to tell him they are freely at his service Not to speak now of the swarmes of these execrable prostitutes the Plagues of the Town that have every Night their several walks and appartments to ply in you may find them as Solomon sayes not in the Corner of the Streets onely but thick in the very midst of them and turning the whole City into a Stews It were well if the like dispatch of some Ship-Loads of them were made to the Forraign Plantations as in the time of the Usurper there was And these too glittering as so many Stars all over in the sparkles of St. Martins the proper Lawful Dress of their Trade by the Lacedemonian-Law who allowed none of these Gayities to any but VVhores Nor can I but mention another most profitable Law of Licurgus who ordain'd that the young men of Sparta should have frequent meetings in some publick place where they should Eat and Drink together for a mutual increase of acquaintance and love but when assembled their chiefest discourses were ordain'd to be for the better contrivance and carrying on the prosperity and wellfare of the City on purpose saith my Author to avoid any idle or impertinent prattle and when all finish'd in due Order and Civility to depart each one to his proper home and betimes too without the Least Debauchery by VVine lest any notice should be taken of any disorder in their passage home through the Streets for Night was to be no mantle to vice no more than the day had been so as they were under an Excellent Government they should take care to honour it by as honest a Carriage What Reader does the Wilderness bring forth better fruit than the Garden We are every one striving for the Honour of the Church and the Kingdomes Let us at least take Example by these Heathen who surely were wiser in their Generation than we Is debauchery and sottishness become the true methods of Honour to so incomparable a Government we lye under and the roarings of our Taverns at midnight quite drowning the Anthems of our Church Alas when shall we begin with a faithful sobriety with these Spartanes to bring glory to the Crown and the Miter whose Honour we so passionately contend for yet suffer its Jewels to swim away in our Spew and then only to dispute for a Decipline when we have lost our sences in the draughts of intemperance and are not able to speak a plain word And further they were so farr from Pomp of Apparrel that no gain or encrease of Estate could tempt them to so vain a Superfluity they consulted the well-Ordering and Governing their Bodies more than any Exteriour magnificent Clothing and loved better to have Mony in their Purses than to lay it all out on their Backs When thou knowest Reader what a World of Byas'es appear like Princes among us yet carry all they have in the World about them as He. Long-Coats and a Drivelling-Cloth is the proper Demonstrative Garbe of a Natural and is not unbecoming for him who dresses himself up in his whole Estate and has left not a peny to dine on but is more ridiculous than Jack-Pudding who disguises himself to get some There was once a Gallant in a Velvet-Coat and a Scarlet-Cloak over it walking in Paul's where finding himself very hungry and over-hearing some others discourse of a Feast the Ironmongers held that day in their Hall was glad of that News and resolving to intrude amongst them No sooner appear'd then was courteously received and promoted by the Stewards to the best Seat at the Table as one they thought who might formerly be of the Society or at least descended from a Father that was and now had done them the Honour to Grace them with His Worshipful Company when Dinner was over and he had lay'd well about him and brisk'd up his Spirits with Wine The chiefest of the Company with whom he Convers'd were at length so bold to desire him to discover himself and what Relation he had to their Society To whom he very merrily replyed O a very near affinity to your Trade for I my self am a Monger too They pray him to explain what he meant By my troth Gentlemen since you must know I am a Whore-Monger and have wasted my Estate in my Vocation so that wanting a Dinner I supposed the contiguity of our Callings might