Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	heaven_n	young_a	youth_n	37	3	8.0585	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44419	Golden remains of the ever memorable Mr. John Hales ... with additions from the authours own copy, viz., sermons & miscellanies, also letters and expresses concerning the Synod of Dort (not before printed), from an authentick hand.	Hales, John, 1584-1656.	1673 (1673)	Wing H271; ESTC R3621	409,693	508

actions whatsoever The Arts of this world are by God's providence so divided that they must of necessity belong onely to some all the world cannot be practitioners in any one of them If all were Husband-men what would become of the Merchant's Trade If all were Merchants where were the Scholar The profit of every one of these may peradventure redound to many the skill necessarily resides in few And let us suppose all to be professors of any one the profit of that must needs perish But this wonderful Art of Godliness is of an higher nature and hath a kind of Metaphysical community it must descend unto all particulars we must if we will have any profit by it be all professors of it Secondly few or no Arts are there in the world that are befitting both sexes some are well befitting men but are utterly unfit for women To go abroad to handle the sword to manage foreign matters this belongs unto the man but to keep home handle the distaff to manage the business of the family these belong unto the woman But for the profession and practise of Piety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith St. Basil Womenkind are as far forth capable of it as men are And Gregory Nyssen tells us that in prayer and fasting and other exercises of Godliness there have been women found who have far surpassed men Thirdly in the world Arts and Professions are to be distributed amongst men according to their several complexions as it were and constitutions of mens wits Ex quo libet ligno non fit Mercurius Every temper of nature fits not every profession as every soil will not bring forth all kind of seeds And hence it is that those who have delivered unto us their opinions concerning the institution of youth have advised men warily to observe towards what Profession or Trade their nature leans and to build upon this as upon a foundation All this labour of examining and trying mens capacities and constitutions in the business of piety is at an end For there is no constitution no temper of nature unapt to receive impression from it There is no Nature so stubborn no wit so weak and silly but can make a perfect Christian and quickly by the help of the grace of God inwardly working with it beleive and understand the darkest mysteries of Godliness The reason of this difference is evident For Man's Art cannot alter the nature of the Subject on which he works and therefore if he cannot do what he would he must content himself to do that which the matter upon which he works will give him leave As the Sun which warms the earth gives nothing unto it onely stirs up the nature and faculty it finds in it and so makes it bring forth fruit so good education in any Art if it find a Nature fit to receive and entertain it it will cause it as it were to bud and blossom and bring forth fruit but give or infuse or make a nature it cannot But the holy Spirit of God where it pleases him to sow the seed of Grace doth alter the very complexion and nature of the foil and were our hearts as hard as flint or as barren as the sand he can make them as soft as wax and as fertile as Canaan or the Paradise of God Create a new heart within me saith the Psalmist The conversion of a sinner is a kind of degree of Creation But I must proceed Fourthly Aristotle discoursing concerning the fit hearer and learner of Moral and Civil Virtues quite excludes Youth as utterly unfit for any such drift and end And why He is yet forsooth impatient of admonition hot in passion when these things are calm'd and allai'd then is he fit wax to receive the impression of natural instruction But he whom the Schole of Nature hath thus excluded the Schole of Grace and Piety hath especially made choice of From a child to have known the Scriptures Suffer young children to come unto me He that receives not the kingdom of heaven like a young child Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way Many more testimonies of holy Scripture which plainly declare unto us that Youth is the fittest subject to receive the influence and operation of the holy Spirit of God Let the passions of Youth rage never so violently let him as much contemn and set at nought the good and grave advise of his Ancients as ever Rehoboam did yet God that sits upon the flouds and gives them Laws and tames them can bridle the unruliest passion of the most disorderly young man and make him like unto young Ioseph or Daniel Fifthly Old men are very unfit learners of the lessons which the world teacheth and almost impossible it is for a man to begin to study in his age Therefore Opsimathie which is too late beginning to learn was counted a great vice and very unseemly amongst Moral and Natural men For the longer we defer the more unapt still we grow our senses wax duller our memory frailer yea our understanding too will sensibly decay But in the Schole of Christ none is too old to learn no memory too short to remember his duty no disgrace no unseemliness even for old men to come to Schole For the Spirit of God strengthens the memory softens the brain supplies all defects that Age brings with it and makes it were it as dry as Aaron's Rod to bud and blossom and bring forth ripe fruit unto righteousness When David in the Book of Kings had invited old Barzillai to the Court Barzillai who had so kindly entertained him when he fled from his ungracious son he excuses himself unto the King by reason of his age his taste fails him his hearing is gone he hath lost all sense of Court delights and pleasures and therefore he requests that favour for his young son Chimham as a fitter person to make a Courtier I am this day saith Barzillai fourscore years old and can I discern between good and evil Can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing-women Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burthen to my Lord the King Let thy servant I pray thee turn back again that I may die in my own city and be buried in the grave of my father and of my mother But behold thy servant Chimham let him go over with my Lord the King and do to him what shall seem good unto thee Thus indeed it is in the Courts of earthly Princes men by age do grow unserviceable and combersome and therefore there is a time for them to retire The counsel which Quintilian gives his Oratour Desinere cum desidereretur to resign and give over whil'st as yet he is serviceable belongs especially unto Courtiers Best for them to resign their places with honour whil'st yet they are able to do service lest if they stay till age hath made them unserviceable they may peradventure be

because it seems fitly to open my meaning I will not refrain to speak it Lucian when Priam's young son was taken up into heaven brings him in calling for milk and cheese and such countrey eates as he was wont to eat on earth Beloved when we first come to the Table of God to heavenly Manna and Angels food it is much with us as it was with Priam's young son when he came first into Heaven we cannot forget the milk and cheese and the gross diet of the world Our Saviour and his blessed Apostles had great and often experience of this errour in men When our Saviour preach'd to Nicodemus the doctrine of Regeneration and new birth how doth he still harp upon a gross conceit of a re-entry to be made into his mother's womb When he preach'd unto the Samaritan woman concerning the water of life how hardly is she driven from thinking of a material Elementary water such as was in Iacob's well When Simon Magus in the Acts saw that by laying on of hands the Apostles gave the Holy Ghost he offers them money to purchase himself the like power He had been trafficking and merhandizing in the world and saw what authority what a Kingdom money had amongst men he therefore presently conceited coelum venale Deumque that God and Heaven and All would be had for money To teach therefore the young Courtier in the Court of Heaven that he commit no such Solecisms that hereafter he speak the true language and dialect of God our Saviour sets down this as a principal rule in our Spiritual Grammar That his Court is not of this world Nay Beloved not onely the young Courtier but many of the old servants in the Court of Christ are stain'd with this errour It is storied of Leonides which was Schole-master to Alexander the great that he infected his non-age with some vices quae robustum quoque jam maximum Regem ab illa institutione puerili sunt prosecuta which followed him then when he was at man's estate Beloved the world hath been a long time a Schole-master unto us and hath stain'd our non-age with some of these spots which appear in us even then when we are strong men in Christ. When our Saviour in the Acts after his Resurrection was discoursing to his Disciples concerning the Kingdom of God they presently brake forth into this question Wilt thou now restore the Kingdom unto Israel Certainly this question betrays their ignorance their thoughts still ran upon a Kingdom like unto the Kingdoms of the world notwithstanding they had so long and so often heard our Saviour to the contrary Our Saviour therefore shortly takes them up Non est vestrum your question is nothing to the purpose the Kingdom that I have spoken of is another manner of Kingdom then you conceive Sixteen hundred years Et quod excurrit hath the Gospel been preached unto the world and is this stain spunged out yet I doubt it Whence arise those novel and late disputes de notis Ecclesia of the notes and visibility of the Church Is it not from hence they of Rome take the world and the Church to be like Mercury and Sofia in Plautus his Comedies so like one another that one of them must wear a toy in his cap that so the spectators may distinguish them whence comes it that they stand so much upon State and Ceremony in the Church Is it not from hence that they think the Church must come in like Agrippa and Bernice in the Acts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Luke speaks with a great deal of pomp and train and shew and vanity and that the service of God doth necessarily require this noise and tumult of outward State and Ceremony Whence comes it that we are at our wits ends when we see persecution and sword and fire to rage against the true professours of the Gospel Is it not because as these bring ruine and desolation upon the Kingdoms of the world so we suppose they work no other effect in the Kingdom of Christ All these conceits and many more of the like nature spring out of no other fountain then that old inveterate errour which is so hardly wiped out of our hearts That the State of the Church and Kingdom of Christ doth hold some proportion some likeness with the state and managing of temporal Kingdoms Wherefore to pluck out of our hearts Opinionem tam insitam tam vetustam a conceit so ancient so deeply rooted in us our Saviour spake most excellently most pertinently and most fully when he tells us that his Church that his Kingdom is not of this world In which words of his there is contained the true art of discovering and knowing the true nature and essence of the Church For as they which make Statues cut and pare away all superfluities of the matter upon which they work so our Saviour to shew us the true proportion and feature of the Church prunes away the world and all superfluous excrescencies and sends her to be seen as he did our first Parents in Paradise stark naked As those Elders in the Apocryphal story of Susanna when they would see her beauty commanded to take off her mask so he that longs to see the beauty of the Church must pull off that mask of the world and outward shew For as Iuda in the Book of Genesis when Thamar sate veil'd by the way-side knew not his daughter from an whore so whilst the Church the Daughter and Spouse of Christ sits veil'd with the world and pomp and shew it will be an hard matter to discern her from an harlot But yet further to make the difference betwixt these Kingdoms the more plainly to appear and the better to fix it in your memories I will breifly touch some of these heads in which they are most notoriously differenced The first head wherein the difference is seen are the persons and subjects of this Kingdom For as the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world so the subjects of this Kingdom are men of another world and not of this Every one of us bears a double person and accordingly is the subject of a double Kingdom The holy Ghost by the Psalmist divides heaven and earth betwixt God and man and tells us as for God He is in heaven but the earth hath he given to the children of men So hath the same Spirit by the Apostle St. Paul divided every one of our persons into heaven and earth into an outward and earthly man and into an inward and heavenly man This earth that is this body of clay hath he given to the sons of men to the Princes under whose government we live but heaven that is the inward and spiritual man hath he reserved unto himself They can restrain the outward man and moderate our outward actions by Edicts and Laws they can tie our hands and our tongues Illa se jactet in aula AEolus Thus far they can go and when they are