The spirit of man [is] the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Ver. 27. The spirit of a man is the candle of the Lord.] Some read it, The breath of a man, that is, his life, is the candle of the Lord, and sense it thus: Look how men deal by their lights or lamps, so doth God by our lives. Some we put out as soon as lighted; others we let alone till half wasted, and others again till wax and wick and all be consumed. So some die younger, some older, as God pleaseth. But the word Neshamah here used, as it holds affinity with the Hebrew Shamajim, Heaven, so it doth with the Latin word mens, the mind, or reasonable soul, which indeed is that light that is in us by an excellence, Mat 6:23 that "spirit of a man that knows the things of a man," 1Co 2:11 that candle that is in a man's belly or body, as in a lantern, making the least mote perspicuous. This is true by a specialty of that divine faculty of the soul, conscience, which is frequently called the "spirit of a man," as being planted by God in all and every part of the reasonable soul, where she produceth occasionally several operatious, being the soul's schoolmaster, monitor, and domestic preacher; God's spy, and man's overseer, the principal commander and chief controller of all his doings and desires.
“ Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ira concipit intra
Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo. ”
- Ovid.
Surely it is a most celestial gift, saith one. a It is so of God and in man, that it is a kind of middle thing between God and man; less than God, and yet above man. It may be called our God, saith another, b in the sense that Moses was Pharaoh's; having power to control and avenge our disobediences with greater plagues than ever Moses brought on Egypt. Therefore that was no evil counsel of the poet: Imprimis reverere teipsum. c And,
“ Turpe quid ausurus, re, sine teste, time. ”
a Bifeild on 1 Pet. ii.
b Huet. of Cons.
c Auson.