Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	love_n	young_a	youth_n	62	3	7.6992	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45113	The balm of Gilead, or, Comforts for the distressed, both morall and divine most fit for these woful times / by Jos. Hall.	Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.	1650 (1650)	Wing H366; ESTC R14503	102,267	428

turn his blessing into a curse Yea the same God who best knows the price of his own favours as he makes no small estimation of age himself so he hath thought fit to call for an high respect to be given to it by men out of an holy awe to himself Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honour the face of the old man and fear thy God I am the Lord. Hence it is that he hath pleased to put together the Ancient and the Honourable and hath told us that an hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in a way of righteousness And lastly makes it an argument of the deplored estate of Jerusalem that they favoured not the Elders As therefore we too sensibly feel what to complain of so we well know what priviledges we may challenge as due to our age even such as nature it self hath taught those heathens which have been in the next degree to savage If pride and skill have made the Athenians uncivill yet a yong Lacedemonian will rise up and yeeld his place in the Theatre to neglected age §. 3. The advantages of old age 1. Fearlesnesse It is not a little injurious so to fasten our eyes upon the discommodities of any condition as not to take in the advantages that belong to it which carefully laid together may perhaps sway the balance to an equall poise Let it be true that old age is oppressed with many bodily griefes but what if it yeeld other immunities which may keep the scales even whereof it is not the least that it gives us firm resolution and bold security against dangers and death it selfe For the old man knowes how little of his clew is left in the winding and therefore when just occasion is offered sticks not much upon so inconsiderable a remainder Old age and orbity as Cesellius professed were those two things that emboldened him And when Castritius refused to deliver the hostages of Placentia to Carbo the Consul and was threatned with many swords hee answered those menaces with his many yeares And that wee may not disdain home-bred instances and may see that brave spirits may lodge in cottages In my time a plain Villager in the Rude Peake when theeves taking advantage of the absence of his family breaking into his solitary dwelling and finding him sitting alone by his fire side fell violently upon him and one of them setting his dagger to his heart swore that he would presently kill him if he did not instantly deliver to them that money which they knew he had lately received the old man looks boldly in the face of that stout Villain and with an undaunted courage returnes him this answer in his Peakish Dialect Nay even put fro thee sonne I have lived long enough but I tell thee unlesse thou mend thy manners thou wilt never live to see halfe my daies put fro thee if thou wilt What young man would have been so easily induced to part with his life and have been so ready to give entertainment to an unexpected death Surely the hope and love of life commonly softens the spirits of vigorous youth and disswades it from those enterprises which are attended with manifest perill whereas extream age teacheth us to contemn dangers §. 4. The second advantage of old age Freedome from passions Yet a greater priviledge of age is a freedome from those impetuous passions wherewith youth is commonly over-swayed for together with our naturall heat is also abated the heat of our inordinate lusts so as now our weaker appetite may easily be subdued to reason The temperate old man in the Story when one shewed him a beautifull face could answer I have long since left to be eyesick And that other could say of pleasure I have gladly with drawn my self from the service of that imperious mistresse What an unreasonable vassalage our youthfull lusts subject us unto we need no other instance then in the strongest and wisest man How was the strongest man Sampson effeminated by his impotent passion and weakned in his intellectuals so far as wilfully to betray his own life to a mercenary Harlot and to endure to hear her say Tell mee wherewith thou mayest be bouud to doe thee hurt How easily might he have answered thee O Delila Even with these cords of brutish sensuality wherewith thou hast already bound me to the losse of my liberty mine eyes my life How was the wisest man Solomon besotted with his strange Wives so as to be drawn away to the worship of strange gods And how may the firre trees howle when the Cedars fall who can hope to be free from being transported with irregular affections when wee see such great precedents of frailty before our eyes From the danger of these miserable miscarriages our age happily secures us putting us into that quiet harbour whence we may see young men perillously tossed with those tempests of unruly passions from which our cooler age hath freed us §. 5. The third advantage of age experimentall knowledge Adde hereunto the benefit of experimentall knowledge wherewith age is wont to enrich us every dram whereof is worth many pounds of the best youthly contentments in comparison whereof the speculative knowledge is weak and imperfect this may come good cheap perhaps costs us nothing that commonly we pay deare for and therefore is justly esteemed the more precious If experience be the mistresse of fools I am sure it is the mother of wisedome neither can it be except we be too much wanting to our selves but the long observation of such variety of actions and events as meet with us in the whole course of our life must needs leave with us such sure rules of judgement as may be unfailing directions for our selves and others In vain shall this be expected from our younger yeares which the wise Philosopher excludes from being meet Auditors much lesse Judges of true morality In regard whereof well might the old man say Yee young men think us old men fooles but we old men know you young men to be fooles Certainly what value soever ignorance may put upon it this fruit of age is such as that the earth hath nothing equally precious It was a profane word and fit for the mouth of an Heathen Poet That Prudence is above Destiny But surely a Christian may modestly and justly say That next to Divine Providence Humane Prudence may challenge the supreme place in the administration of these earthly affairs and that Age may claim the greatest interest in that Prudence Young Elihu could say Multitude of yeers should teach wisdom And the wise man Oh how comely a thing is judgement for gray hairs and for ancient men to know counsel Oh how comely is the wisdom of old men and understanding and counsel to men of honour In regard whereof the Grecians had wont to say that young men are for Action old men for Advice And among the Romans we