Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A45226
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The devovt soul, or, Rules of heavenly devotion : also, The free prisoner, or, The comfort of restraint by Jos. H. B.N.
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Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.
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1650
(1650)
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Wing H380; ESTC R9783
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42,043
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192
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our souls before him in all our necessities For that God who is infinitely mercifull yet will not have his favours otherwise conveighed to us than by our supplications The style of his deare ones is his people that prayeth and his owne stile is the God that heareth prayers To him therefore doth the devout heart pour out all his requests with all true humility with all fervour of spirit as knowing that God will hear neither proud prayers nor heartlesse wherein his holy desires are regulated by a just method First suing for spirituall favours as most worthy then for temporall as the appendances of better and in both aiming at the glory of our good God more than our own advantage And in the order of spirituall thngs first and most for those that are most necessary and essentiall for our souls health than for secondary graces that concern the prosperity comfort of our spirituall life Absolutely craving those graces that accompany salvation all others conditionally and with reference to the good pleasure of the munificent giver Wherein heed must be taken that our thoughts be not so much taken up with our expressions as with our desires and that we doe not suffer our selves to languish into an unfeeling length and repetition of our sutes Even the hand of a Moses may in time grow heavy so therefore must we husband our spirituall strength that our devotion may not flagge with over-tiring but may bee most vigorous at the last And as we must enter into our prayers not without preparatory elevations so must we be carefull to take a meet leave of God at their shutting up following our supplications with the pause of a faithfull and most lowly adoration and as it were sending up our hearts into heaven to see how our prayers are taken and raising them to a joyful expectation of a gracious and successefull answer from the father of mercies SECT XX. UPon the comfortable feeling of a gracious condescent follows an happy fruition of God in all his favours so as we have not them so much as God in them which advanceth their worth a thousand fold and as it were brings down heaven unto us whereas therefore the sensuall man rests only in the meer use of any blessing as health peace prosperity knowledge and reacheth no higher the devoute soul in and through all these sees and feels a God that sanctifies them to him and enjoyes therein his favour that is better than life Even we men are wont out of our good nature to esteem a benefit not so much for its owne worth as for the love and respect of the giver Small legacies for this cause finde deare acceptation How much more is it so betwixt God and the devout soul It is the sweet apprehension of this love that makes all his gifts blessings Doe we his gifts blessings Doe we not see some vaine churle though cryed down by the multitude herein secretly applauding himself that he hath bags at home how much more shall the godly man find comfort against all the crosses of the world that hee is possessed of him that possesseth all things even God All-sufficient the pledges of whose infinite love he feels in all the whole course of Gods dealing with him SECT XXI OUt of the true sense of this inward fruition of God the devout soul breaks forth into cheerfull thanksgivings to the God of all comfort praising him for every evill that it is free from for every good thing it enjoyeth For as it keeps a just Inventory of all Gods favours so it often spreads them thankfully before him and layes them forth so near as it may in the full dimensions that so God may be no loser by him in any act of his beneficence Here therefore every of Gods benefits must come into account whether eternall or temporall spirituall or bodily outward or inward publick or private positive or privative past or present upon our selves or others In all which he shall humbly acknowledge both Gods free mercy and his own shamefull unworthinesse setting off the favours of his good God the more with the soyle of his own confessed wretchednes and unanswerablenesse to the least of his mercies Now as there is infinite variety of blessings from the liberall hand of the Almighty so there is great difference in their degrees For wheras there are three subjects of all the good we are capable of The Estate Body Soul and each of these doe far surpasse other in value the soul being infinitely more worth than the body and the body far more precious than the outward estate so the blessings that appertain to them in severall differ in their true estimation accordingly If either wee doe not highly magnifie Gods mercy for the least or shall set as high a price upon the blessings that concerne our estate as those that pertain to the body or upon bodily favours as upon those that belong to the soul we shall shew our selves very unworthy and unequall partakers of the Divine bounty But it will savor too much of earth if we be more affected with temporall blessings than with spirituall and eternall By how much nearer relation then any favor hath to the Fountain of goodnesse and by how much more it conduceth to the glory of God and ours in him so much higher place should it possesse in our affection and gratitude No marvell therefore if the Devout Heart bee raised above it self and transported with heavenly raptures when with Stephens eyes it beholds the Lord Jesus standing at the right hand of God fixing it self upon the consideration of the infinite Merits of his Life Death Resurrection Ascension Intercession and finding it self swallowed up in the depth of that Divine Love from whence all mercies flow into the soule so as that it runs over with passionate thankfulnes and is therefore deeply affected with all other his mercies because they are derived from that boundlesse Ocean of Divine goodnesse Unspeakable is the advantage that the soule raises to it self by this continuall exercise of thanksgiving for the grateful acknowledgement of favours is the way to more even amongst men whose hands are short and strait this is the meanes to pull on further beneficence how much more from the God of all Consolation whose largest bounty diminisneth nothing of his store And herein the devout Soul enters into its heavenly Task beginning upon earth those Hallelujahs which it shall perfect above in the blessed Chore of Saints and Angels ever praising God and saying Blessing and Glo-ry and Wisdome and Thanksgiving and Honour and Power and Might be unto our God for ever and ever Amen SECT XXII NOne of all the services of God can bee acceptably no not unsinfully performed without due devotion as therefore in our prayers and thanksgivings so in the other exercises of Divine Worship especially in the reading and hearing of Gods Word and in our receipt of the blessed Sacrament it is so necessary that without it we
dangerous inconvenience wherof hath been too often found in the rash and unwarrantable expressions that have fallen from the mouths of unwary suppliants but we must addresse our selves with due preparation to that holy worke we must digest our sutes fore-order our supplications to the Almighty so that there may be excellent and necessary use of meet rules of our Devotion He whose Spirit helps us to pray and whose lips taughts us how to pray is an all-sufficient example for us all the skill of men and Angels cannot afford a more exquisite modell of supplicatory Devotion than that blessed Saviour of ours gave us in the mount led in by a divine and heart-raising preface carried out with a a strong and heavenly enforcement wherein an awfull compellation makes way for petition and petition makes way for thanksgiving the petitions marshalled in a most exact order for spirituall blessings which have an immediate concernment of God in the first place then for temporall favours which concern our selves in the second so punctuall a method had notbeen observed by him that heareth prayers if it had been all one to him to have had our Devotions confused and tumultuary SECT III. THere is commonly much mistaking of Devotion as if it were nothing but an act of vocall prayer expiring with that holy breath and revived with the next taske of our invocation which is usually measured of many by frequence length smoothnesse of expression lowdnes vehemence Whereas indeed it is rather an habituall disposition of an holy soul sweetly conversing with God in all the forms of an heavenly yet awfull familiarity and a constant entertainment of our selves here below with the God of spirits in our sanctified thoughts and affections One of the noble exercises whereof is our accesse to the throne of grace in our prayers whereto may be added the ordering of our holy attendance upon the blessed word sacraments of the Almighty Nothing hinders therefore but that a stammering suppliant may reach to a more eminent devotion than hee that can deliver himself in the most fluent and patheticall formes of Elocution and that our silence may bee more devout than our noise We shall not need to send you to the Cels or Cloysters for this skill although it will hardly be believed how far some of their Contemplative men have gone in the Theory hereof Perhaps like as Chymists give rules for the attaining of that Elixir which they never found for sure they must needs fail of that perfection they pretend who erre commonly in the object of it alwayes in the ground of it which is faith stripped by their opinion of the comfortablest use of it certainty of application SECT IV. AS there may be many resemblances betwixt Light and Devotion so this one especially that as there is a light universally diffused through the aire and there is a particular recollection of light into the body of the Sun and Stars so it is in Devotion There is a generall kind of Devotion that goes through the renewed heart and life of a Christian which wee may terme Habitual and Virtual and there is a speciall and fixed exercise of Devotion which we name Actuall The soule that is rightly affected to God is never void of an holy Devotion where ever it is what ever it doth it is still lifted up to God and fastned upon him and converses with him ever serving the Lord in feare and rejoycing in him with trembling For the effectuall performance whereof it is requisite first that the heart bee setled in a right apprehension of our God without which our Devotion is not thanklesse onely but sinfull With much labour therefore agitation of a mind illuminated from above we must find our selves wrought to an high awfull adorative and constant conceit of that incomprehensible Majesty in whom wee live and move and are One God in three most glorious Persons infinite in wisdome in power in justice in mercy in providence in all that he is in all that he hath in all that he doth dwelling in light inaccessible attended with thousand thousands of Angels whom yet we neither can know neither would it availe us if we could but in the face of the eternall Son of his Love our blessed Mediatour God and Man who sits at the right hand of Majesty in the highest heavens from the sight of whose glorious humanity we comfortably rise to the contemplation of that infinite Deity whereto it is inseparably united in and by him made ours by a lively Faith finding our persons and obedience accepted expecting our ful redemption and blessednesse Here here must our hearts be unremoveably fixed In his light must we see light no cloudy occurrences of this world no busie imployments no painfull sufferings must hinder us from thus seeing him that is invisible SECT V. NEither doth the devout heart see his Grd aloof off as dwelling above in the circle of heaven but beholds that infinite Spirit really present with him The Lord is upon thy right hand saith the Psalmist Our bodily eye doth not more certainly see our owne flesh than the spirituall eye sees God close by us Yea in us A mans own soule is not so intimate to himselfe as God is to his soule neither do we move by him only but in him What a sweet conversation therefore hath the holy soul with his God What heavenly conferences have they two which the world is not privy to whiles God entertains the soul with the divine motions of his Spirit the soul entertaines God with gracious compliances Is the heart heavy with the grievous pressures of affliction the soule goes in to his God and pours out it selfe before him in earnest bemoanings and supplications the God of mercy answers the soule again with seasonable refreshings of comfort Is the heart secretly wounded and bleeding with the conscience of some sinne it speedily betakes it selfe to the great Physician of the soul who forthwith applyes the balm of Gilead for an unfailing and present cure Is the heart distracted with doubts the soule retires to that inward Oracle of God for counsail he returnes to the soule an happy settlement of just resolution Is the heart deeply affected with the sense of some speciall favour from his God the soul breaks forth into the passionate voice of praise thanksgiving God returns the pleasing testimony of a cheerful acceptation Oh blessed soul that hath a God to go unto upon all occasions Oh infinite mercy of a God that vouchsafes to stoop to such intirents with dust ashes It was a gracious speech of a worthy Divine upon his death-bed now breathing towards heaven That he should change his place not his company His conversation was now before hand with his God and his holy Angels the only difference was that he was now going to a more free and full fruition of the Lord of life in that region of glory above whom he had truly though with weaknes and