A96093:1581
The beatitudes
The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Whereunto is added Christs various fullness. The preciousness of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousness. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.The beatitudes: or A discourse upon part of Christs famous Sermon on the Mount. Wherunto is added Christs various fulnesse. The preciousnesse of the soul. The souls malady and cure. The beauty of grace. The spiritual watch. The heavenly race. The sacred anchor. The trees of righteousnesse. The perfume of love. The good practitioner. By Thomas Watson, minister of the word at Stephens Walbrook in the city of London.
London: printed for Ralph Smith, 1660
Appendix › The preciousness of the Soul.Appendix › The preciousnesse of the Soul.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. The soul is spiritual in its object, it contemplates God and heaven; God is the orb and centre where the soul doth fix; if you could lift up a stone into the highest Region, though it did break in an hundred pieces, it would fall to its centre. God is the terminus ad quem, the soul moves to him, as to its rest. Psal. 116.7. Return to thy rest O my soul. He is the Ark to which this Dove flies; nothing but God can fill an heaven-born soul; if the earth were turned into a globe of gold, it could not fill the heart, it would still cry, Give, Give. The soul being spiritual, God only can be the adequate object of it.
2. The soul is spiritual in its object, it contemplates God and heaven; God is the orb and center where the soul doth fix; if you could lift up a stone into the highest Region, though it did break in an hundred pieces, it would fall to its center. God is the terminus ad quem, the soul moves to him, as to its rest. Psal. 116.7. Return to thy rest O my soul. He is the Ark to which this Dove flies; nothing but God can fill an heaven-born soul; if the earth were turned into a globe of gold, it could not fill the heart, it would still cry, Give, Give. The soul being spiritual, God only can be the adequate object of it.
3. The soul is spiritual in its operation, it being immaterial, doth not depend upon the body in its working. The senses of seeing, hearing, and the rest of those Organs of the body, cease and dye with the body, because ⟨p. 456⟩they are parts of the body, and have their dependence on it; but the soul (as Aristotle saith) hath a nature distinct from the body, it moves and operates of it self though the body be dead, and hath no dependence upon, or coexistence with the body. Thales Milesius an ancient Philosopher defines the soul,[Greek or Hebrew]: He calls the soul a self-movable, it hath an intrinsical principle of life and motion, though it be separate from the body. And thus you have seen the souls spirituality.