Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	die_v	good_a	let_v	4,185	5	4.2812	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38061	A preservative against Socinianism. The first part shewing the direct and plain opposition between it, and the religion revealed by God in the Holy Scriptures / by Jonath. Edwards.	Edwards, Jonathan, 1629-1712.	1693 (1693)	Wing E217; ESTC R24310	65,484	89

conclusion which they would draw from this principle would be Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye and after death comes no reckoning or account Come on let us enjoy the good things that are present and let us speedily use the Creatures like as in youth Let us fill our selves with costly Oyntments and let no flower of the spring pass by us Let us crown our selves with Rose-buds before they are withered Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness Let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place for this is our portion and our Lot is this Wisd 2. ver 6 7 8. But tho this notion overturns all natural Religion yet it is it self effectually overthrown by the dictates of natural Conscience which are an unanswerable proof both of the existence and the Justice of God for we must know that Conscience is something more than bare Reason for Reason may direct but Conscience will prescribe Reason gives us a Rule for the government of our actions Conscience passes that Rule into a Law gives it its force and obligation The prescribing of a Law is the act of a Superior and no man is properly Superior to himself and consequently no man can by his own act peremptorily oblige himself except that act be enforced by some other and higher obligation And therefore Conscience is not bare Reason but reason as it is Gods Vicegerent cloathed with his Authority armed with his Justice and therefore in a more Imperious way it commands our obedience not only perswading us to our duty but threatning for the neglect of it it puts on a Majestick Aire tells us this must be done or refuse it at your peril indeed it executes the office and sustains the person of a Legislator a Witness and a Judge first prescribes a Law then accuses for our disobedience and lastly solemnly arraigns the Sinner for his guilt and then passes sentence upon him So that these actions of Conscience and the Tribunal that God hath erected there are one of the clearest and most uncontrolled proofs of a future Judgement of which the former are a kind of Anticipation And indeed if we look back to former times and consult the History of Ages and Countries the most ignorant and barbarous we shall find that as the Light of Nature hath directed them to the belief and acknowledgement of a God so one of the earliest notions that arose in their minds when they have thought of him hath bin the Apprehension of his Justice of which among other things the numerous tho many of them Impious and Ridiculous rites which they made use of to appease the anger of their incensed Deities are an irrefragable Argument And this apprehension of divine Justice was as one of the principal causes so one of the chiefest if not the only support of natural Religion in the world Now to apply this to our present purpose and to bring the parts of our argument a little closer together If men by the light of nature could discover this Attribute of Justice in God it must unavoidably follow that Justice in him is natural for the light of nature can discover nothing in God but what is so whatever is the effect of Gods meer pleasure and the result of his free will can never be known but by Revelation and it is impossible it should be otherwise discovered except we should suppose men to be Omniscient and that they may know more of God than they can of one another For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man that is within him 1 Cor. 2. 11. so much less can any man discern the things of God but the spirit of God He indeed searches the deep things of God such as are the results of his free pleasure and the counsel of his will which lay hidden in the breast of God and must for ever have done so had not he who lay in the bosom of his Father revealed them unto us and therefore if justice were as the Socinians tell us the effect only of Gods free will it must have lain undiscovered to the Gentile world to whom God vouchsafed no revelation of his will which yet is contrary to the account which the Histories of all times and ages have given us of this matter from whence it is evident that the belief of Gods Justice among men is coeval with that of their being written in the same Characters and engraven by the same Hand that implanted the notion of a God in the minds of men and if so then the same hand that defaces the notion of Gods Justice must at the same time and for the same reason erase the belief of his existence out of the Souls of men and I doubt not if the Socinians had lived in those days by this Hypothesis of theirs they would have been extreamly serviceable to Theodorus Diagoras Democritus and Epicurus in the design they were engaged in of rooting the belief of a God and Religion out of the world for they might have told men not only with great plausibility but truth if this opinion were true that all those accusations of Conscience and anxieties of Mind which were occasioned by the belief and dread of divine Justice were the effect only of fancy and delusion and did owe their Original not to a divine Impress but to the Craft and Contrivance of Priests and Polititians who instilled into the minds of weak and unwary men the vain fears of invisible powers representing them armed with Thunder and with the Sword of Justice in their hands whereas really there was no such thing But all this they did to keep the world in awe and thereby to compass the designs of their interest and ambition What further design Socinus himself might have or whether he had any other design by advancing this Opinion than the overturning that great Article of our faith concerning the satisfaction of Christ I shall not positively determine Only this I cannot but acquaint the Reader with which hath bin long since observed likewise by others that Socinus and his followers in all their books and disputations have made it their business chiefly to cavil and make exceptions to their adversaries not careing what became of Religion so that they might with any colour avoid the Arguments with which they were pressed as is in some measure made evident by several passages which we have quoted out of their writings in the foregoing discourse And I have this further to add that as Socinus by denying the divinity and satisfaction of Christ hath plainly overturned the foundation upon which the Christian Church and Religion have bin built so by this assertion about Gods justice and by several others dispersed and slily insinuated through his writings he hath given a shrewd blow to all Religion whatsoever whether natural or revealed so that an unwary Reader by perusing his writings may find himself an Atheist before he well perceives

asserting of his own honour and vindicating the authority of his Laws and in short the revenging the contempt and violation of them as is evident in certain invisible punishments inflicted upon some sinners in this life such as are obduration and giving them up to a Reprobate sense and will be much more evident in those everlasting punishments for so we will make bold to call them whatever the Socinians may say to the contrary in the life to come where God can aime at nothing but the satisfaction of his Justice and thereby the manifestation of his own Glory But whatever the reasons may be of inflicting punishment either by God or man yet Justice is the hand that inflicts it which is called distributive or vindictive and is therefore defined by an Ancient writer from one of its noblest offices to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an exacting of punishment And by Plutarch to the same purpose to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ultrix in eos qui adversus legem divinam delinquunt Now these things being thus premised I proceed to make good my charge against the Socin in calling that not only a false but a dangerous Opinion of theirs which makes Justice to be no necessary or essential Attribute in God but a matter purely Arbitrary and Contingent as being the effect only of his free will 1. Then this Opinion I say is false and impious because it furnishes us with such an Idea of God as is dishonourable to him and will naturally lead us to a contempt of him because it teaches us so to conceive of God as of one that is not necessarily concerned in the Actions of men and the affairs of the World that is it gives us a notion of a God without a providence for if there be a providence it must chiefly and principally be imployed as was said in our first Prop. in the care and government of Human Affairs there can be no government without Laws no laws without the Sanctions of Punishment either expressed or necessarily implyed in all such Laws no punishment without Justice to inflict it and consequently that we may bring both ends of our Sorites together where there is no Justice there is no Providence and where the one is not necessary the other is not so too Therefore tho the Socinians do acknowledge Gods providence and that he doth actually govern the World yet this doth not take off the charge of falshood and impiety from this position of theirs because thereby they make his providence to be a contingent and perfectly an Arbitrary matter you may notwithstanding all this have a true notion of God and do him no wrong if you conceive of him as of one that may be unconcerned in the actions of men who after he hath sent them into the world may suffer them to live as they please every man doing that which is right in his own eies which yet is great Impiety so much as to imagine forasmuch as it is repugnant to the infinite perfections of Almighty God helps to debase him in our thoughts to weaken that reverence and esteem which arises in our minds when we conceive of him and thereby leads us naturally and inevitably from a disesteem to a denyal of him So that what at first I called a dangerous I am now afraid in the conclusion will prove to be an Atheistical assertion upon which account Epicurus among the Ancients was generally accounted an Atheist Posidonius the Stoick thought him so and that it was only the Envy and Infamy which attended such persons which obliged him not to profess himself one But what in words he affirmed he did in deed effectually overthrow For by denying Gods providence Re sustulit Oratione reliquit deos In which charge against Epicurus Cotta the Academick hath had the consent of all wise men among the Heathens as well as the suffrage of Christians whose way of arguing would be of no force had they not bin of Opinion that if there be a God who made the World there must necessarily be a Providence and if a Providence I am sure there must be that Attribute in God which we call Justice without which that other can never be exercised But you will say that God may give men Laws for the government of their Actions and that will be a sufficient vindication of his providence tho he assigns no punishment to the breach of them That is tho we cannot conceive a God without a providence yet we may conceive a providence without Justice Indeed Socinus hath told us so for speaking of the command of God to Adam in Paradise requiring him not to eat of the forbidden fruit and the threatning annexed In the day thou eatest thou shalt dy the death Gen. 3. which threatning Covet his adversary told him did flow from that Justice in God which we have hitherto bin speaking of he Answers that this Justice was not any thing in God inhering in him and therefore nothing could flow from it as being only an accidental effect of his free will Cum à me ostensum fuerat ejusmodi justitiam in Deo non veré residere nec proprié Dei qualitatem dici posse sed tantummodo effectum voluntatis ejus nihil ex ea fluere potuit as much as if he had said non entis nullae sunt operationes what is not can have no influence to produce any thing And for a confirmation of this he adds that God might have given Adam and what God might have done to Adam he might undoubtedly have done to all the Sons and posterity of Adam this law and not have annexed Death as the punishment of the breach of it nay if he had so pleased he might have assigned no punishment at all But this is delivered by Socinus with the same Confidence as are many of his other absurd Errors in which he stands single by himself against the constant and uniform suffrage of Divines Ancient and Modern Fathers and Schoolmen Philosophers and Lawyers and those both Canonists and Civilians among whom it passes for an uncontrolled maxim That that is very vainly and impertinently commanded which may be securely neglected Frustra est aliquid praecipere quod impuné potest negligi and this bold position he lays down and gives us not the least reason for it but his own affirmation But tho he gives us no reason for his assertion I am sure there is very great as well as very apparent reason against it forasmuch as such Laws as these will neither secure the honour of God nor serve the ends of his providence being but in the nature of good advice which as we said before every man is at liberty to take or refuse at his pleasure So that while he makes the Law precarious at the same time and for the same reason he makes the Obedience of men so too in which case God must be beholding not to his own Authority but