Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	grace_n	great_a	soul_n	4,875	5	4.7291	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42824	Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions in two parts : the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence / by Joseph Glanvil. With a letter of Dr. Henry More on the same subject and an authentick but wonderful story of certain Swedish witches done into English by Anth. Horneck.	Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.; More, Henry, 1614-1687.; Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.	1681 (1681)	Wing G822; ESTC R25463	271,903	638

of others more deserving whose worth is not acknowledg'd I say these and such like odd things may with the greatest probability be resolved into the Conduct and Menages of those invisible Supervisors that preside over and govern our affairs But if they so far concern themselves in our matters how is it that they appear not to maintain a visible and confest correspondence with some of the better Mortals who are most fitted for their Communications and their influence To which I have said some things already when I accounted for the unfrequency of Apparitions and I now add what I intend for another return to the main Objection viz. 2 That the apparition of good Spirits is not needful for the Designs of the better world whatever such may be for the interest of the other For we have had the Appearance and Cohabitation of the Son of God we have Moses and the Prophets and the continued influence of the Spirit the greatest arguments to strengthen Faith the most powerful motives to excite our Love and the noblest encouragements to quicken and raise our Desires and Hopes any of which are more than the apparition of an Angel which would indeed be a great gratification of the Animal Life but 't would render our Faith less noble and less generous were it frequently s●… assisted Blessed are they that believe and yet have not seen Besides which the good Angels have no such ends to prosecute as the gaining any Vassals to serve them they being ministring Spirits for our good and no self-designers for a proud and insolent Dominion over us And it may be perhaps not impertinently added That they are not always evil Spirits that appear as is I know not well upon what grounds generally imagined but that the extraordinary detections of Murders latent Treasures falsified and unfulfilled Bequests which are sometimes made by Apparitions may be the courteous Discoveries of the better and more benign Genii Yea 't is not unlikely that those warnings that the world sometimes hath of approaching Judgements and Calamities by Prodigies and sundry odd Phaenomena are the kind Informations of some of the Inhabitants of the upper world Thus was Jerusalem forewarned before its sacking by Antiochus by those airy Horsemen that were seen through all the City for almost forty days together 2 Mac. V. 2 3. and the other Prodigious Portents that fore-ran its Destruction by Titus which I mention because they are notorious instances And though for mine own part I scorn the ordinary Tales of Prodigies which proceed from superstitious fears and unacquaintance with Nature and have been used to bad purposes by the zealous and the ignorant Yet I think that the Arguments that are brought by a late very ingenious Author to conclude against such Warnings and Predictions in the whole kind are short and inconsequent and built upon too narrow Hypotheses For if it be supposed that there is a sort of Spirits over us and about us who can give a probable guess at the more remarkable futurities I know not why it may not be conjectured that the kindness they have for us and the appetite of foretelling strange things and the putting the world upon expectation which we find is very grateful to our own natures may not incline them also to give us some general notice of those uncommon Events which they foresee And I yet perceive no reason we have to fancy that whatever is done in this kind must needs be either immediately from Heaven or from the Angels by extraordinary Commission and Appointment But it seems to me not unreasonable to believe that those officious Spirits that oversee our Affairs perceiving some mighty and sad alterations at hand in which their Charge is much concerned cannot chuse by reason of their affection to us but give us some seasonable hints of those approaching Calamities to which also their natural desire to foretel strange things to come may contribute to incline them And by this Hypothesis the fairest probabilities and strongest ratiocinations against Prodigies may be made unserviceable But this onely by the way SECT XIII I Desire it may be considered further 3 That God himself affords his intimacies and converses to the better Souls that are prepared for it which is a priviledge infinitely beyond Angelical correspondence I confess the proud and phantastick pretences of many of the conceited Melancholists in this age to Divine Communion have prejudiced divers intelligent persons against the belief of any such happy vouchsafement so that they conclude the Doctrine of immediate Communion with the Deity in this Life to be but an high-flown notion of warm imagination and over-luscious self-flattery and I acknowledge I have my self had thoughts of this nature supposing Communion with God to be nothing else but the exercise of vertue and that peace and those Comforts which naturally result from it But I have considered since that God's more near and immediate imparting himself to the Soul that is prepared for that happiness by divine Love Humility and Resignation in the way of a vital touch and sense is a thing possible in it self and will be a great part of our Heaven That Glory is begun in Grace and God is pleased to give some excellent Souls the happy Antepast That holy men in ancient times have sought and gloried in this enjoyment and never complain so sorely as when it was with held and interrupted That the expressions of Scripture run infinitely this way and the best of Modern good men do from their own experience attest it That this spiritualizeth Religion and renders its enjoyments more comfortable and delicious That it keeps the Soul under a vivid sense of God and is a grand security against Temptation That it holds it steady amid the flatteries of a prosperous state and gives it the most grounded anchorage and sup port amid the Waves of an adverse condition That 't is the noblest encouragement to vertue and the biggest assurance of an happy Immortality I say I considered these weighty things and wondred at the carelesness and prejudice os thoughts that occasion'd my suspecting the reality of so glorious a Priviledge I saw how little reason there is in denying matters of inward sense because our selves do not feel them or cannot form an apprehension of them in our minds I am convinced that things of gust and relish must be judg'd by the sentient and vital faculties and not by the noetical exercises of speculative understandings And upon the whole I believe infinitely that the Divine Spirit affords its sensible presence and immediate beatifick Touch to some rare Souls who are divested of carnal self and mundane pleasures abstracted from the Body by Prayer and holy Meditation spiritual in their Desires and calm in their Affections devout Lovers of God and vertue and tenderly affectionate to all the world sincere in their aims and circumspect in their actions inlarged in their Souls and clear in their Minds These I think are the