Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A36543
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The Christians zodiake, or, Twelve signes of predestination unto life everlasting written in Lattin by Ieremie Drexelius.; Zodiacus Christianus locupletatus. English
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Drexel, Jeremias, 1581-1638.
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1647
(1647)
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Wing D2168; ESTC R38850
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91,238
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264
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men and reserved the heavens to be disposed by the soveraigne Lord thereof Take then your liberties in seeing thinking and doing every thing you have a fancy to make as many figaries as you list think every thing lawfull which you have a mind unto let your body take its fill of contentment be sure to live at your ease walke in the wayes of your heart and take your owne eyes for guides Et scitote quod pro omnibus his adducet vos Deus in judicium Eccl. 11. c. But yet be assured that for all these you must render an account to God and though a man live never so many yeares and have past them all over to his hearts content yet hee is to bee mindfull of the dismall time of those many dayes Ibid. which when they arrive will argue all that is past of vanity Wherefore let your endevour rather be to procure by your good works a certainty of your vocation and election Satagite ut per bona opera certam vestram vocationem electionem saciatis Pet. 1. What the signes of predestination are you have already understood 1. Not only to love our friends but our enemies 2. To relieve â—he poor not only by the bounty of our hands but also with the affection of our minds 3. To endure all afflictions patiently and praise God Almighty for sending them 4. To set light by the goods of fortune in regard of heaven 5. and 6. To consider how smally it availes us to hearken to the interiour admonitions of God or exteriour of men if we neglect to put them in execution 7. So to detest our former sins as never to commit the like again 8. To imagine we are not pleas ng to God until we become displeasing to our selves 9. Not to perswade our selves that we love Iesus Christ so long as we love and cherish not his presence within our selves 10. To resist stoutly our vitious inclinations especially at first since then every one can overcome them if he list 11. To lay a sure foundation of vertue in our minds lest otherwise we be alwayes wavering 12 To become so familiar wiih death by often thinking of it as we may the lesse feare it when we come to dye for he never dyes unwillingly who dayly and seriously imagines that he must dye at last And this is the way to that life wholly devoyd of death And now let each one take a surveigh of his owne conscience whether these signes of Predestinations whereby he may conceive a certtaine hope that he is not strayed from the way of the good which leadeth into heaven be extant in him or no As for the way of the wicked although for the present it seemeth smooth and levelled yet it ends in hell and utter darknesse at the last and notwithstanding by reason the entrance to it seems so commodious and delightsome there are so many flock unto it to their perditions as our own eyes may testifie that true saying of our Saviour Christ Lata porta speciosa via est quae ducit aâ—perditionem c. that the gate is wide and the way spacious which leads to perdition and many too many alas are those who enter by it It is reported by divers credible Authors that a certaine holy Anchoret beheld in a vision soules falling as thick into hell as flocks of snow or drops of raine insomuch as the damned all amazed at their multitude not without good reason imagined the world to be at an end as thinking it impossible considering their number who descended into hell that any more persons shauld be left alive St. Vincent Ferrerius of St. Dominicks order that mirrour of preachers and religious men did once in a publike sermon discourse with great efficacy of the scarcity of the predestinate and confirmed it with a Wonderfull example whose words in reverence of so great a person I will be as exact in reporting as the difference of language will give me leave Before our Saviours comming into the world says he in humane flesh S. Vinc. Dâ—min Septuag serm 6. post initium more than five thousand yeares were already past and except some of few of the children of Israel all the rest of the world was damned Imagine with your selfe besides in the time of the Law of Moses how many Children have dyed without Circumcision as also in the time of the Law of Christ how many without Baptisme of all which number likewise not one is saved Moreover how many Jewes Sarazens Pagans and Jnfidels how many wicked Christians for faith and Baptisme cannot save a man unlesse they be accompanyed with good life and how many other Christians are there besides who although they have faith are yet proud avaricious of lewd life and given to many other vices c. And here note the example of the Arch-deacon of Lions who having resigned his Benefice undertook a course of austere pennance for forty yeares together in the wildernesse This holy man after his death appeared to the Bishop of Lyons who desiring of him to discover somewhat unto him of the other world the Saint answered that thirty thousand in the world had dyed the same day with him wherof only 5. were saved himselfe and St. Bernard being two of them This is the reason why our Saviour advises us with so much solicitude to eâ—ter by the narrow gate Jntrate per a gustam portam This narrow gate of paradise is the wil of God to which every one must conforme himselfe who desires to enter into paradise The broad gate is our owne will and the spatious way is worldly conversation as to eate and drink our fill to follow our lustfull appetites take our pleasure revenge our selves of those who have injured us and the like So as pauci sunt electi but a few are saved To which exhortation of St. Vincent we will add another example recounted by an approved Author A famous Preacher in Germany named Bertold of Saint Francis Order inveighing once in a great audience with much vehemency of speech against a certaine vice a woman there present conscious of her owne guiltinesse therein conceived so great a terrour at his words that on the suddain in the midst of so great a throng she fell downe for dead But afterwards being restored to life again by the joynt mediation of the peoples prayes she declared unto them how she had bin presented before the judgment seat of Almighty God aâ—d among many other particulars how of 60000. of all nation aswell Christians as infidels who by divers sorts of death had departed this life at the same instant with her onely 3. soules of so huge a multitude entred heaven and al the rest damned to eternal fire O how true is it that many enter indeed by the large and spatious way of perdition St. Chrysostome grounding himselfe on the sence of these words of our Saviour Christ doth confidently affirm that the number is far greater of those who goe to hell but yet the kingdome of God though it hath fewer inhabitants is more capacious Multi sunt plures ghennam ingredientes Tom. 9. hom 14. sed maius est Dei regnum licet habeat paucos And tel me saith he how many think you of those who live in this city shal be saved I know that which I shal say wil â—ffend your eares but notwithstanding I wil utter it Of so many thousand scaâ—cely one hundred I doubt me whether I have not been too large in my account For alas how much malice is there now a dayes in the younger sort in the elder how much negligence c This was the discourse of that most prudent and saintly man that Doctour of the Church and light of the world St. Chrysostome in that mighty and populous City of Antioch and that too in such a time when the fervour was not yet extinguished of the Primitive Church and who then shal wonder if S Paul with so much solicitude doth admonish us to worke our salvation with feare and trembling Ad Phil. 2. cum metu tremore v stram salutem operamini and our Saviout Christ in such expresse tearmes exhorts us to endevour to enter by the narrow gate Luke 13. Truth cryes out unto us strive to labour and endevour with all your forces to enter into this gate by works worthy of repentance into which we cannot bee admitted without much industry and a resolution to overcome all difficulties whatsoever and those who falter and go lingring on may never hope to arrive unto it For unless the minds intention be fervent indeed saith St. Bede and a man forcibly overcome himselfe he wil easily recoyle and be wholly unable to persevâ—r in so narrow a passage so great is the effusion of the unruly appeâ—ites of his flesh to say nothing of the tentations and persecutions which the world and the devill procure those who endevour to enter by this narrow way And even as a water-man who rowes against the streame must adde so much the more force unto his Oare so those who steere on their soules towards heaven in spight of the practises of the enemy must enforce themselves with all the vertue they have to overcome the violence they find with greater violence for feare their soules should be carryed away by force of the streame like boats into irrecoveâ—able errour Evigilate itaque justi 1 Cor. 15. â— nolite peccare Wherefore all you that are just be watchfull and do not sin neither is any to bee accounted watchful but such as in al places at al times so lead their lives as if each day were the lâ—st they should ever see and have so wary an eye over their conscience in all thoughts and works as if they were instâ—ntly to dye Let us therefore doe that whilst we may which otherwise when we may no longer we shall wish to have done Quae seminaverit homo haec metet a man shall reap onely that which he hath sowne and so he who sowes in his flesh doth reap corruption from his flesh againe Gal. 6. whereas hee who sowes in spirit doth reap from his spirit an eternall life FINIS