Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A44666
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The blessednesse of the righteous discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 / by John Howe ...
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Howe, John, 1630-1705.
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1668
(1668)
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Wing H3015; ESTC R19303
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281,960
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488
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of your spirits I shall recommend onely some few instances that you may see how little reason or inducement a soul conformed to the holy will of God hath to seek its comforts and content elsewhere Faith corresponds to the Truth of God as it respects Divine Revelations How pleasant is to give up our understandings to the conduct of so safe a guide to the view of so admirable things as he reveals It corresponds to his goodnesse as it respects his offers How delectible is it to be filling an empty Soul from the Divine fulnesse What pleasure attends the exercise of this Faith towards the Person of the Mediatour viewing him in all his Glorious Excellencies receiving him in all his gracious Communications by this Eye and Hand How pleasant is it to exercife it in reference to another world living by it in a daily prospect of eternity in reference to this world to live without care in a chearful dependence on him that hath undertaken to care for us Repentance is that by which we become like the holy God to whom our sin had made us most unlike before how sweet are kindly relentings penetential tears and the return of the Soul to its God and to a right mind And who can conceive the Ravishing Pleasures of love to God! wherein we not onely imitate but intimately unite with him who is Love it self How pleasant to let our Souls dissolve here and slow into the Ocean the element of love Our Fear corresponds to his Excellent Greatnesse and is not as it is a part of the New Creature in us a tormenting servile passion but a due respectfulness and observance of God and there is no mean pleasure in that holy awful seriousness unto which it composes and formes our Spirits Our Humility as it respects him answers his high excellency as it respects our own inferiours his gracious condescention How pleasant is it to fall before him And how connatural and agreable to a good Spirit to stoop low upon any occasion to do good Sincerity is a most Godlike excellency an imitation of his Truth as grounded in his All-sufficiency which sets him above the necessity or possibility of any advantage by collusion or deceit and corresponds to his Omnisciency and heart-searching eye It heightens a mans spirit to a holy and generous boldness makes him apprehend it beneath him to do an unworthy dishonest action that should need a palliation or a concealment And gives him the continual pleasure of self approbation to God whom he chiefly studies and desires to please Patience a prime Glory of the Divine Majestie continues a mans possession of his own Soul his Liberty his Dominion of himself He is if he can suffer nothing a Slave to his vilest and most sordid passions at home his own base fear and bruitish anger and effeminate grief and to any mans lusts and humours besides that he apprehends can do him hurt It keeps a mans Soul in a peaceful calm delivers him from that most unnatural self-torment defeats the impotent malice of his most implacable enemy who fain would vex him but cannot Justice the Great Attribute of the Judge of all the Earth as such so farre as the imppression of it takes place among men preserves the Common Peace of 〈◊〉 World and the Private Peace of each 〈◊〉 in his own bosome so that the former be not disturbed by doing of mutual injuries nor the latter by the conscience of having done them The brotherly love of fellow Christians the impression of that special love which God bears to them all admits them into one anothers bosomes and to all the indearments and pleasures of a mutual communion Love to enemies the expresse image of our heavenly Father by which we appear his children begotten of him overcomes evil by goodness blunts the double edge of revenge at least the sharper edge which is alwayes towards the Author of it secures our selves from wounding impressions and resentments turns keen anger into gentle pity and substitutes mild pleasant forgiveness in the room of the much uneasier thoughts and study of retaliation Mercifulnesse towards the distressed as our Father in Heaven is merciful heaps blessings upon our Souls and evidences our Title to what we are to live by the Divine mercy An universal benignity and propension to d◠good to all in imitation of the immense diffusive goodnesse of God is but kindnesse to our selves Rewards it self by that greater pleasure is in giving then in receiving and associates us with God in the blessedness of this work as well as in the disposition to it who exercises loving kindnesse in the Earth because delighteth therein Here are some of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the things wherein consists that our conformity to the divine Nature and Will which is proper to our present state And now who can estimate the blessedness of such a soul Can in a word the state of that soul be unhappy that is full of the Holy Gost full of Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance those blessed fruits of that blessed Spirit Blessedness is connaturalized unto this soul Every thing doth its part and all conspire to make it happy This soul is a Temple an habitation of holiness here dwells a Deity in his glory 'T is a Paradise a Garden of God Here he walks and converses daily delighted with its fragrant fruitfulness He that hath those things and aboundeth is not barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus he is the Sun and the knowledge of him the quickening beams that cherish and ripen these fruits But the soul that lacketh these things is a Desart a habitation of Devils Here is stupid disconsolate infidelity inflexible obstinacy and resolvedness for Hell Hatred and contempt of the Sovereign Majesty whom yet its secret misgiving thoughts tell it will be too hard for it at last Here is swoln pride and giddy vain-glory disguised hypocrisie and pining envy raging wrath and ravenous avarice with what you can imagine besides leading to misery and desolation You have then some prospect of a happy temper of Spirit It can now be no difficulty to you to frame an Idea of it in your thoughts to get a notional image or this likeness in the notion of it into your minds but that will avail you little if you have not the real image also that is your Spirits really fashioned and formed according thereto If having the knowledge of these things as the Pagan morallists expression before mentioned is of vertuous Rules and Precepts they become not habitual to you and your Spirits be not transfigured into them But now I treat with such as are supposed to have some such real impressions that they may be stir'd up to endeavour a further perfecting of them In order whereto I shall adde but this two-fold advice 1. Be very careful that this living Image such you have been formerly told it is may
consists first in righteousness and then in peace and joy in the holy Ghost Thou wilt so daily behold the face of God in righteousness and with pleasure but wilt most of all please thy self to think of thy final appearance before him and the blessedness that shall ensue 4. Watch and arm thy self against the too forcible strokes and impressions of sensible objects Let not the favor of such low vile things corrupt the pallate of thy soul. A sensual earthly mind and heart cannot tast heavenly delights They that are after the flesh do savor the things of the Flesh they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit Labor to be throughly mortified towards this world and the present state of things Look upon this scheme pageant as passing away keep natural appetites under restraint the world and the lusts of it pass away together sensuality is an impure thing Heavenly refined joy cannot live amid'st so much filth Yea and if thou give thy flesh liberty too far in things that are in specie lawful it will soon get advantage to domineer and keep thy soul in a depressing servitude Abridge it then and cut it short That thy mind may be enlarged and at liberty may not be throng'd and prepossest with carnal imaginations and affections Let thy soul if thou wilt take this instruction from a Heathen look with a constant erect mind into the undefiled light neither darkened nor born down towards the Earth but stopping its Ears and turning its Eyes and all other Senses back upon it self and quite abolishing out of it self all Earthly Sighs and Groans and Pleasures and Glories and Honours and disgrace and having forsaken all these choose for the Guides of its way true Reason and strong Love the one whereof will shew it the way the other make it easie and pleasant 5. Having voided thy mind of what is earthly and carnal apply and turn it to this blessed Theam The most excellent and the vilest objects are alike to thee while thou mindest them not Thy thoughts possibly bring thee in nothing but vexation and trouble which would bring in assoon joy and pleasure didst thou turn them to proper objects A thought of the heavenly glory is assoon thought as of an earthly Cross. We complain the world troubles us then what do we there why get we not up in our spirits into the quieter Region what trouble would the thoughts of future glory be to us How are the thoughts and wits set on work for this flesh but we would have our Souls flourish as the Lilies without any thing of their own care Yea we make them toyl for torture and not for joy revolve an affliction a thousand times before and after it comes and have never done with it when eternal blessedness gains not a thought 6. Plead earnestly with God for his Spirit This is joy in the Holy Ghost or whereof he is the Author Many Christians as they must be called are such strangers to this work of imploring and calling in the blessed Spirit as if they were capable of adopting these words We have not so much as heard whether there be an Holy Ghost That name is with them as an empty sound How hardly are we convinc't of our necessary dependance on that free Spirit as to all our truly Spiritual operations This Spirit is the very earnest of our inheritance The foretasts and first fruits we have here of the future blessedness The joy and pleasure the complacential relishes we have of it before hand are by the gracious vouchsafement and work of this blessed Spirit The things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard and which have not entred into the heart of man are revealed by this Spirit Therefore doth the Apostle direct his Prayer on the behalf of the Ephesians to the Father of this glory that he would give them this Spirit of wisdom and revelation to enlighten the eyes of their understanding that they might know the hope of his calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance in or among the Saints And its revelation is such as begets an impression in respect whereof 't is said also to seal up to the day of redemption Therefore pray earnestly for this Spirit not in idle dreaming words of course but as being really apprehensive of the necessitie of prevailing And give not over till thou find that sacred fire diffusing it self through thy mind and heart to enlighten the one and refine the other and so prepossess both of this glory that thy soul may be all turned into joy and praise And then let me adde here without the formality of a distinct head That it concerns thee to take heed of quenching that Spirit by either resisting or neglecting its holy dictates or as the same precept is otherwise given of grieving the Spirit he is by Name and Office the Comforter The Primitive Christians 't is said walked in the fear of God and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost Is it equal dealing to grieve him whose business it is to comfort thee or canst thou expect joy where thou causest grief Walk in the Spirit adore its power Let thy Soul do it homage within thee Wait for its holy influences yield thy self to its ducture and guidance so wilt thou go as the redeemed of the Lord with everlasting joy upon thy head till thou enter that presence where is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore Nor do thou think it improper or strange that thou should'st be called upon to rejoyce in what thou dost not yet possess Thy hope is in stead of fruition 't is an anticipated enjoyment We are commanded to rejoyce in hope and Saints have profest to do so to rejoyce even in the hope the hope of the glory of God Nor is it unreasonable that should be thy present highest joy For though yet it be a distinct thing and indistinctly revealed the excellency of the object makes compensation for both with an abundant surplusage As any one would much more rejoyce to be assured by a great person of ample possessions he would make him his heir to though he knew not distinctly what they should be then to see a shilling already his own with his own eyes CHAP. XXX The addition of two Rules that more specially respect the yet future season of this blessedness after this life viz. Rule 7. That we patiently wait for it until death Rule 8. That we love not too much this present life THere are yet two more Rules to be superadded that respect the season of this blessedness when we awake i. e. not till we go out of time into eternity not till we pass out of the drowsie darkness of our present state till the night be over with us and the vigorous light of the everlasting day do shine upon us Hence therefore it will be further necessary 7. That while the appointed proper season of this blessedness