Selected quad for the lemma: body_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
body_n	dead_a	faith_n	true_a	7,023	5	6.6884	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61386	An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily case of wandrings in the worship of God by Richard Steele M.A. and minister of the Gospel.	Steele, Richard, 1629-1692.	1667 (1667)	Wing S5382; ESTC R8661	121,210	256

be busie too If we had only an Idol to serve the body were enough but God is a spirit and cannot be conversed with without the spirit yea and the whole spirit also Fond man that thinks with his narrow soul to deal with God and somewhat else who alone is immense and beyond our greatest capacity He must be taken up and goe out of the world in a sense that will get into Heaven The soul on the lip and the soul in the ear do rid work in the service of God 3. It is sweet work Psal. 138.5 Yea they shall sing in the wayes of the Lord for great is the glory of the Lord mark shall sing their spirits shall neither droop nor step aside He that attends on the Lord hath a most sweet imployment now the mind useth not to straggle at most rare musick or under an enchanting song Alexanders great soul yet is said exilire è convivio under the charms of Musick O the gracious presence of God! his sweet smiles and blessed love-tokens that can transport Angels sure they may ingage the heart of man and sufficiently fill it Read the Canticles and say then Is not converse with God an Heaven upon Earth and how far is Heaven from distracted thoughts sad and severe things afflict the mind It would flit from such subjects but sweet imployment ingages all the heart next dwelling in Heaven is the soul flying to Heaven in an Ordinance Our dryest Duties yield us least comfort The nearer the Sun the warmer More close to God more sweet you 'l find him and never more joyfull than in the House of Prayer SECT III. THe third reason is taken from the Nature of our Condition and that is this 1. We cannot live without God In him we live as to our natural life every 〈◊〉 is fetcht from Him so in our spiritual life the life of the soul is He that made it A world without a Sun is dark a body without a soul is dead but a soul withont God is dark is dead is damned It s true men feed and sing and make a shift without God in the World but he that lives truly lives by faith the other life Beasts live they eat and drink and work but know not God but if you will define the life of a soul God must be in the beginning in the midst and in the end of it 2. Our only way of communion with God is in an Ordinance This is the River the streams whereof make glad the heart Were a City besieged by mortal enemies round about and no relief to be conveyed but by the River that waters it how fatal to the City would the stopping of that River be that City must starve or yield The ordinary supplies that a Christian cannot be without come swimming down from Heaven through the Ordinances of God Distractions stop the River hinder Prayer from ascending to God hinder instruction from descending into the heart intercept commerce and starve the soul. The zeal of the Iews was eminent this way of whom Iosephus relates that when Pompeys Souldiers shot at the thickest of them in the siege of Ierusalem yet amidst those arrows did they go and perform their rites as though there had been peace why thy Prayer is the Embassador Distractions cut off the feet and Prov. 26.6 He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool cutteth off the feet and drinketh damage A wandring Prayer is a message by the hand of a fool and that man is like to drink damage that useth it A man is a poor thing without God and God is not ordinarily met with but in an Ordinance 3. All our strength and Heart is too little for this business All our understanding too little to apprehend his rare perfections All our affections too weak and shallow to love imbrace and delight in him hence Mark 12.33 we are obliged to love and so to serve the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength that is with every faculty of the soul and with the utmost strength of every faculty Now if it be hard enough to climb the hill unto God with wings how shall we ascend with these weights about us or think to please with half an heart when the whole is too little for he is a great King and his name is dreadfull among the Heathen when all the water in the pool will but turn the Mill that Miller is a fool that by twenty Channels lets out the Water other wayes The intense and earnest heart is little enough to converse with God all the water in our Pool will but turn the Mill. What then can the remiss heart bring to pass and how unlikely are we to obtain with the great God with the negligent approaches of a trivial spirit with a little part of a little heart SECT IV. THe fourth Reason is taken from the Nature of Distractions 1. They divide the Heart and disable it wholly now a divided heart can do nothing at all Hos. 10.2 Their heart is divided now shall they be found faulty If one heart divided from another make a fault much more faulty is one heart divided within it self Hence it comes to pass that Satan offers as the false Mother did about the living Child 1 King 3.26 Let it be neither mine nor thine but divide it If he cannot block your way to the presence of God and make good his claim to the living Child as She would have done then with might and main he furthers all imaginable diversions to part the Soul and cryes Lord let it be neither thine nor mine but divide it well knowing that as the Child so the heart while intire is a living and lively heart but divide it and destroy it As he that runs at once after two Hares catches neither so two businesses at once spoils both He that thinks to treat the Creator and the creature at the same time enjoyes neither of them And thus the vain heart of man by over-doing undoes it self and reaching at two matters spoils them both 2. These Distractions frustrate the Ordinance and cause the great name of God to be taken in vain Instead of forcing the Hearers these do but beat the air and cannot reach the Heart of God because they never reach your own And this is one of the follies of a roving heart that it consumes as much time in a sensless as in a serious Duty and yet doth nothing in it brings nothing to pass And so the Holy God stands over the heedless sinner with Iobs words Job 16.3 When shall Vain words have an End I am weary with this tinkling Cymbal either pray in earnest or pray not at all hear in earnest or hear not at all As good not at all as never the better The service of God requires a man not a shadow yea all a man and more than a man our

and affections while it remains imperfect in your mind and judgment Associate also with zealous Christians borrow some of their heat and lend them some of your light and be not ashamed to talk of God Heaven and a Soul when you are together we lose the benefit of mens graces for want of broaching those blessed Vessels of grace you converse with Especially read the Scripture which will inflame thee and mold thee being rightly used into its blessed nature I have known some that before their private duties would meditate on a verse in the Psalms Can●icles or the like and then run hot and lively into the presence of God And chose rather to be frequent and fervent than long and roving in a duty Shorter prayers may sometimes inflame when long ones tire the spirits and that way the antient Christians in Egypt used to take And lastly do as holy David did that carried such a nature as thou dost be ever calling to God as He who is at it eight or nine times in Psal. 119. Quicken me in thy way quicken me and I will call upon thy name and if He had need thus to fetch fire from Heaven how much more have We Q. Were it not better to omit the duty than attempt it with such a dull heartless frame as this A. 1. Omission of a duty will never fit us for the better performance of a duty Luther was used to say The oftner I neglect the more unfit I am this is nothing but a shift of the Devil 2. If thou dost endeavour with thy utmost strength● and sincerity though thou be dull it 's better than to leave it undone for as one sin prepares for another so one duty prepares for another Fall therefore to work and then God is engaged to help thee never think neglects will mend it one sin never cures another By the upright use of these means you will find the holy Ghost as it were stretch himself on your cold hearts and infuse life and heat into you And when you are soaring aloft in the Spirit that cunning marksman cannot shoot and fetch you down by his distracting Arrows SECT V. THe fifth cause of Distractions in God's Worship is Worldly mindedness An heart in earth and an heart in Heaven are far asunder As long as the Lark soareth upward she sings without danger of the Net but stooping to gaze on the Foulers deceitful Glass she is quickly ensnared So is it with us while we live aloft we are safe but when the heart stoops down and grows worldly through the false glass Satan puts upon it then are we taken in these snares Ezek. 33.31 With their mouthes they shew much love but their heart goeth after their covetousness Their faces look one way but they row another their eyes are up towards heaven their hearts set on the earth and grasping two affairs they prosper in neither How should he set his affections on the things above that hath set them chiefly on things below when as these two are directly opposed Col. 3.2 How should the Soul that Bird of Paradise flie up to heaven in a duty when it is not only weighed down with the lead of natural corruption but intangled in the lime-twigs of earthly mindedness they can never write on their duties Holiness to the Lord that stamp upon their coyn God with us Hence it comes to pass that the heart is loth to come to an Ordinance and then longs to goe out again how heavily do they go to Church how lightly to the market for here the heart goes with them and there it 's left behind and being forc'd into a duty because its treasure is in the world the heart hastens to be there again and sicut piscis in arido is out of its element when in an Ordinance We read of the world set in a mans heart Eccles. 3.11 and of an heart set on the world Ps. 62.10 Now how should God have any of such a heart No no he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth there he can rest without weariness of that he can discourse without distractions but when he should turn to God and flee to heaven this care knocks at door and that business whispers him in the ear and there the carcase is left but the heart is gone The Prophet Hosea 4.11 tells us that whoredome and wine and new wine take away the heart It were very unlikely that any man in the heat of those sins should pray or hear or meditate aright and it is much what as likely for an heart that is taken away with the cares of this world and drowned therein to converse with God without innumerable wandrings Mistake not it is not the world but worldly mindedness that is taxed not the increase of riches but the heart set upon them And so no doubt a poor man may have his part of distractions through his want of worldly things as well as the rich through his abundance He may have many a distracting thought what to do for the world as the rich hath what to do with the world And thus we see those things which were given for our welfare prove our snare and what should hire us to serve God keeps us from him Which shews what good reason the wise man had to crave neither riches nor poverty but convenient comforts seeing the weight of the world distracts one sort and the want of the world another sort in the very immediate service of God Howbeit for the most part the heart that is fullest of the world is emptiest of God Now the best remedy against worldly mindedness is Mortification O get a chip of Christ's Cross Gal. 6.14 whereby the world will be crucifi'd to you and you to the world So was Paul As saith one of the Antients Paul and the world were like two dead bodies that neither embrace with delight nor part with grief from each other You must be dead I say dead to the world if you mean to live to God or live with him A drunken prayer and a worldly prayer are alike devout Therefore Love not the world nor the things of the world for so long the love of the Father is not in you and if you love him not how should you pray to him It would be an ill favoured sight to behold all this Congregation in their work-day cloaths here how unpleasing a sight to God is it to see us all with our work-day hearts Now that you may be rid of an earthly heart faithfully make use of these directions 1. Get faith to believe the report God hath given of the world that all that is in it is but the lusts of the flesh the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life a poor vain thing not able to give the soul a breakfast this all that have tasted it and Christ also do aver and canst thou