Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	let_v	lord_n	sin_n	6,239	5	4.5925	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59608	The voice of one crying in a wilderness, or, The business of a Christian, both antecedaneous to, concomitant of, and consequent upon, a sore and heavy visitation represented in several sermons / first preacht to his own family, lying under such visitation, and now made publike as a thank-offering to the Lord his healer by S.S. ...	Shaw, Samuel, 1635-1696.	1666 (1666)	Wing S3046; ESTC R33876	103,770	256

a particular pinching love Oh take heed of this creature-love of valuing any created thing any otherwise than in God any otherwise than as being from God partaking of him and leading to him 3. Live not upon Ordinances These are Gods institutions love them cleave to them attend upon them let no temptation cause you to leave them but live not upon them place not your Religion place not your hope your happiness in them but love them only in God attend upon them yet not so much upon them as upon God in them lie by the Pool but wait for the Angel love not no not a divine ordinance for its own sake Why who doth so Alas who almost doth not 1. Thus did they in Ezek. 33. 32. who delighted in the Prophets eloquence and in the Rhetorick of his Sermons as much as in a well tuned voice and harmonious musick and so do thousands in England who read the Bible for the style or the stories sake and love to sit under learned and elegant discourses more for accomplishment than for conversion And swarms of Priests who preach themselves more than Christ Jesus even in his own ordinances as a proud Boy rides a horse into the Market to set forth himself more than his Masters goods 2. But there are many not so gross as these who do yet use ordinances in a way very gross and unspiritual placing their devotion in them and sinking their Religion into a settled course of hearing or praying who will wait upon God as they call it at some set and solemn times New Moons and Sabbaths it may be evening and morning but Religion must not be too busie with them nor intermeddle in their ordinary affairs or worldly employments it hath no place there they do not count it a garment for every dayes wear 3. And not only these but even almost all men are too apt to seek rest in duties and ordinances or at least to be pretty well satisfied with the work done whether they have conversed with God there or no Oh if you love your souls seek you happiness higher conversing with divine ordinances I confess is honourable and amiable but it is too low a life for an immortal soul Affirmatively Let nothing satisfie you but God himself take up with no pleasure no treasure no portion no paradise nay no Heaven no happiness below the infinite supreme and self-sufficient good Let your eye be upon him and his all-filling sulness let your desire be unto him and to the remembrance of his name follow hard after to know the Lord and to enjoy the Father through his Son Jesus Christ let your fellowship be with the Father and with the Son by the spirit 1 Joh. 1. 3. O love the Lord all ye his Saints Psal 31. 23. yea love him with all your soul and all your strength Mat. 22. 37. yea and keep your selves alwayes in the love of God Jude 21. persevere and increase in the love of God Keep your selves in the love of God Oh sweet duty Oh amiable pleasant task Oh sweet and gratesul command Away ye crowd of creatures I must keep my heart for my God Away ye gawdy suitors away ye glittering toyes there is no room for you My whole soul if its capacity were ten thousand times larger than it is were too scant to entertain the supreme good to let in infinite goodhess and fulness Oh charge it upon your selves with the greatest vehemence love the Lord O my soul keep thy self in the love of God let the love of God constrain you and keep your selves under the most powerful constraints of it In a word live upon God as upon uncreated life it self drink at the fountain seed upon infinite fulness depend upon Almighty Power refer your selves to unsearchable wisdom and unbounded love see nothing but God in the creature taste nothing but God in the world delight your selves in him long for communion with him and communications from him to receive of his fulness grace for grace Then do we live most like Angels when we live most purely in God and find all the powers of our souls spending themselves upon him and our selves our life and all the comforts of it flowing from him and again swallowed up in him But because we are yet in the body I shall explain it in these following particulars 1. Converse with God in all your Selfexcellencies I bade you before not converse with these now I say converse with God in these Thus do the Angels they know nothing that they have of their own they enjoy nothing distinct from God They are excellent creaturs excellent in knowledge power holiness c. yet they enjoy all their excellencies in God and ascribe them all to him Rev. 7. 12. And so let us labour to do 1. View your selves not in your own particular Beings but in the Essence of God look upon your selves as being and subsisting in the midst of an Infinite Essence in which the whole Creation is as it were wrapt up and doth subsist 2. And what ever excellency you find in your souls or bodyes look not upon it as your own maintain not a Meum and Tuum a distinction of interests be●ween God and your selves but look upon all as Gods and enjoy it in him 3. When you find your selves tempted to cast a fond and unchaste look upon the beauty strength activity or temper of your own bodyes upon the ingenuity wisdom constancy courage composedness of your own souls take heed of settling into a selfish admiration of any of them but enjoy them in God and say This O my body this O my soul is no other than the portraicture of the Blessed God these created excellencies are broken beams of the infinite unspotted uncreated perfections Jer. 9. 23 24. Having once attained to this we shall no longer covet to be admired desire to be commended fret at being undervalued I mean not in a selfish manner but rather break out in a spiritual passion with the psalmist Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works in the children of men Psal 107. 8. 3. Nay let me add when you find your selves ready to put your own stamp upon Gods best coin to look upon supernatural gifts and graces with a sinful selfish admiration remember that you have them only in Christ Jesus and enjoy them in your head labour to enjoy grace it self only in Christ as the Apostle Gal. 2. 20. I yet not I but Christ in me I laboured yet not I but the grace of God 1 Cor. 15. 10. So ought we to glory I believe I love I am patient penitent humble yet not I but the grace of God that is with me Christ Jesus that dwelleth in me And indeed a godly man who thus lives at the very height of his own Being yea and above it too knows best how to reverence himself yea and to love himself too and yet without any self-love For he

a dead Lion Eccles 9. 4. But I may say to these even as our Saviour said to that woman in Joh. 4. 18. concerning her Husband The life that we live here is not our life The union of the sensitive soul with the body is indeed truly and properly the life of a beast and its greatest happiness for it is capable of no higher perfection But the union of the rational soul with God is the noblest perfection of man and his highest life so that the life of a believing soul is not destroyed at death but perfected Neither was the Apostle weary of his life because of the adversities of it The Apostle was of a braver spirit sure than any Stoick he durst live though he rather desired to dye All the conflicts he endured with the world never wrung such a sigh from him as the conflict that he had with his own corruptions did Rom. 7. 24. O wretched man c. All the perfecutions in the world never made him groan so much as the burden of his flesh doth here and his great distance from the Lord. A godly soul can converse with persecuting men and a tempting Devil can handle briars and thorns can grapple with any kind of oppressions and adversities in the flesh without despondency so long as it finds it self in the bosome of God and in the arms of Omnipotence But when it begins to consider where it is how far it is from its God its life and the happy state that God hath prepared it for then it cannot but groan within it self and be ready with Peter to cast it self out of the ship to get to its God to land it self in eternity Neither indeed to speak truly is it only the sense of sin against God which se●s the godly soul a going For though it must be confest that this is a heavy burden upon the soul yet the Apostle makes no complaint of this here but only of his distance from God that necessary distance from God that the body kept him it at 2. See here the excellent spirit of true Religion Godly souls do groan after an unbodyed estate not only because of their sins in the body but even because of the necessary distance at which the body keeps them from God We may suppose a godly soul at some time to have no manner of affliction in the world to grieve him no sin unpardoned unrepented of to trouble him yet for all this he is not at perfect rest he is burdened and groans within himself because he is at such a distance from that absolute good whom he longs to know more familiarly and enjoy more ●ully than he doth yet or than is allowed to mortal men And though nothing else ayl him yet the consideration of this distance makes him cry out Oh when shall I come and appear before God! be wholly swallowed up in him see him as he is and converse with him face to face Bare innocency or freedom from sin cannot satisfie that noble and large spirit that is in a truly and God-like soul but that spirit of true goodness being nothing else but an efflux from God himself carryes the soul out after a more intimate union with that Being from whence it came God dwelling in the soul doth by a secret mighty power draw the soul more and more to himself In a word a godly soul that is really toucht with the sense of divine sweetness and ●ulness and imprest with divine goodness and holiness as the wax is with the stamp of the seal could not be content to dwell for ever in this kind of animal body nor take up an eternal rest in this imperfect mixed state though it could converse with the world without a sinful sullying of it self but must needs endeavour still a closer conjunction with God and leaving the chase of all other objects pant and breath not only after God alone but after more and more of him and not only when it is under the sense of sin but most of all when it is under the most powerful influences of divine grace and love cry out with Paul Oh who will deliver me out of this body 3. Suffer me from hence to expostulate a little to expostulate with Christian souls about their unseemly temper Doth this animal life and mortal body keep us at such a distance from our God our happiness Why are we then so fond of this life and mixed state Why do we so pamper this body Why so anxiously studious to keep it up so dreadfully afraid of the ruines of it If we take the Apostles words in the first sense that I named then I may ask with him in the first verse Know we not that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we had a building of God a house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens or vers 8. Why are we not willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord If we take them in the latter sense as this animal body is an hinderance to the souls knowledge of and communion with God then I ask concerning this as the Apostle doth concerning rich men James 2. 6. Why do ye pamper prize honour dote upon this body Doth not this body oppress you distract you burden you clog you hinder you Doth not this body interpose between the Sun of Righteousness between the Father of Lights and your souls that should shine with a light and glory borrowed from him even as the dark body of the earth interposes between the Sun and Moon to ecclipse its light Why are we not rather weary that we are in the body Surely there are some objections some impediments to the souls longing after its happy state which I shall come to anon But I doubt also that there is something that chains the soul to this animal life some cords in this earthly tabernacle that tye up the soul in it but I cannot well imagine what they should be Say not There is something of God to be enjoyed in this life which makes it pleasant For although this be true yet I am sure God gives nothing of himself to a soul thereby to clog it or cloy it Did Moses send for some Clusters of the Land of Canaan into the wilderness think ye that the people might see and taste the fruits and sit still and be satisfied and say Oh it is enough we see that there are pleasant things in that Land we will never come at it or did he not do it rather that they might make the more haste to possess themselves of it Will any man say Away I will have no more land no more mony I have some already Can a godly soul say God hath given me an earnest I desire no more No no but the report that a Christian hears of a rest remaining a happy life remaining for it and the chariots of divine graces that he sees God hath sent out into his soul to

Oh how sweet is the God that made it so Is there any thing lovely it is a picture of him whose name is Love Is any thing firm stable lasting it is a shadow of that glorious essence with whom there is no shadow of change Have you any thing strong it arises out of that God with whom is everlasting strength Doth any creature give rest ease refreshment it springs out of the All satisfying fulness of God In a word labour to climb up by every created excellency as by so many beams to the Father of lights let all the world be to you as Gods Temple and be ready to say of every place as Jacob How dreadful is this place surely this is no other than the house of God! that God who runs thorow all created Beings and from himselves derives several prints of beauty and excellency all the world over But especially take heed of your own created-comforts that they do not insensibly lead a way your hearts and ensnare you into a sinful particular distinct love of them which is a sin soon committed hardly discerned and most hardly reformed If any be freed from these inordinate affections sure they are but few and those few have come dearly by it as he said in another case with a great summ they have obtained this freedom they have payed for it not with the foreskins of the Philistines but with the lives of what they so loved there being no way to cure this evil distemper but cutting off the member infected with it the part that it fed upon As a branch of this head let me add labour to live upon God in the excellencies of other men value them and all their accomplishments only in God as he that did diligere Deum habitantem in Augustino Admire God and enjoy God in them Where ever you see wisdom goodness ingenuity holiness justice or any other accomplishment say Here and there is God And this is the honest way of making our selves Masters of whatever is another mans and enjoying it as truly as he himself doth yea as truly as if it were our own when we behold all these beams as coming from the same fountain of lights and do love them all in him with an universal love This is the rare Art of having nothing yet possessing all things of being rich though one have nothing and of being wise though one know nothing 3. The last way of living upon God in the creature is To taste and feed upon the love of God in them not only his common bounty but his special love in Christ The good will of God gives a sweet relish to every morsel as I hinted before Even in the midst of all your delightful pleasant sweet enjoyments let your souls be more affected with this than with them let this be as the Manna lying upon the top of all your outward comforts which your spirits may gather up and feed upon But this I toucht upon before therefore I shall add no more concerning it Thus I have shewed you how you may imitate the life of Angels in living upon God even whilst you live in the body To this I may add another particular or two 3. Converse with God and live upon him in all his Ordinances Let communion with God be your drift in every duty and the very life and soul and sweetness of every ordinance You never read of a soul more thirsty after ordinances than David as might appear abundantly yet if you look well into the expressions you will find that it was not so much after them as after God in them not after the dead letter but after the living God Psa 4. 2. 2. My soul thirsteth for God for the living God and Psal 84. 2. My heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living God Let the Word preacht or read be as a voyce from Heaven talking you let your conserence be a comment upon that Word let meditation be as a kind of bringing down God into your souls and prayer as a raising up of your souls into God nothing but faith and love put into phrases And so of all the rest 4. Converse with God in all his Providences prosperity adversity plenty penury health sickness peace and perplexity This is a large Theme But as to prosperity I have speken something a ready under that head of conversing with God in creature enjoyments As for adversity I have said much more in a large discourse to describe and commend the Art of conversing with God in affictions Briefly at this time converse not with losses wants afflictions but with God in them and that not only with the justice righteousness severity and soveraignty of God in them but with the goodness and mercy of God in them They are dark Providences we had not need to dwell all together on the dark side of them If all the wayes of the Lord towards his people be mercy and truth Psa 25. 10 then his roughest and most uncouth wayes are so 100 If God be wholly love 1 Joh. 4. 8. then his very corrections proceed not from hatred If it be his name to be good and to do good Psal 119. 68. where have we learnt then to call his afflicting Providences Evils and to divide evil which is but one even as God is one into culpae and paenae sin and affliction surely we speak as men And if God call them so he speaks after the manner of men as he often doth If the governing will of God be pure persect and infinitely good and righteous ought we not to converse with it in a free and chearful manner yea and to love it too In a word pore not upon creature-changes nor the uncertain wheels of motion that are turning up and down we know not how nor how oft but fix your souls upon that All-seeing eye that unbounded understanding that unsearchable and infinite goodness that derives it self thorow the whole universe and sits in all the wheels of motion governing all the strange motions of the creatures in a wonderful and powerful manner and carrying them all in their several Orbs to one last and blessed end Thus imitate the Angelical life even whilst you are in the body converse with God in self-excellencies in creature-excellences Ordinances Providences And yet labour to be more like them still to abstract your mind from all these and all material and sensible things and to converse with God without the help of any creature I mean in the spirit and by a secret feeling of his Almighty Goodness and the energy of grace and the communications of a divine life in your souls In a word if you would taste of Heaven whilst you are upon Earth labour above all things for a true conjunction of your hearts with God in a secret feeling of his goodness and a reciprocation of love to him and to find the holy and blessed God exercising his grace and power upon all the faculties of your souls and