Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	eternal_a	life_n	lord_n	11,091	5	3.8914	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41631	An essay of the true happines of man in two books / by Samuel Gott ...	Gott, Samuel, 1613-1671.	1650 (1650)	Wing G1354; ESTC R6768	89,685	312

efficit Quod si putatis longius vitam trahi Mortalis aura nominis Cum sera vobis rapiet hoc etiam dies Iam vos secunda mors manet Where now is just Fabricius Brutus where Or Cato the severe In a few Letters their surviving Fame Presents an empty Name But can those Titles which we read or hear Make Dead men to appear In dark oblivion ye all lye down Nor are your Persons known Or if you t●ink your Life by others Breath May be redeem●d from Death Time which this Life shall also from you take A second death will make The arguments which the World commonly draws from Death are very strange Epicures say Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall dy Certainly Death is the worst Master of Revells The Covetous will live Poor that he may dy Rich whereas indeed none dy Rich but the richest depart as poor and naked out of this world as any leaving all their welth to others Glorious men dy daringly that so they may be famous after Death yet all their Fame is but as a stately Monument set over their Graves Miserable men invoke Death and fly to it as their only Remedy but they are the worst Physicians who cure by killing These and the like are false enjoiments of Death and to no good end The reference it hath to another World as it is a parting Line between Life and Eternity doth best instruct us rightly to enjoy it Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do saith the Wiseman do it with thy might for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave whither thou goest He makes Death an incitement to Work not an invitation to Play and the chief VVork and Business of our Life is to gain eternall Life Blessed are the dead who dy in the Lord that they may rest from their labors and their works do follow them All other Works all Arts and Sciences and the vast Projects and famous Enterprises which fill the History of the World end in the Grave In that very day his thoughts perish those only are our Stock and Provision for another VVorld Thus a Christian enjoies Death by being familiarly acquainted with him and taking him by the hand goes along with him in all his steps and motions dying dayly to the World and living to God and Heaven and when Death at last summons him to depart he willingly resigns up all as things which no longer concern him He looks upon Heaven as a Kingdom in Reversion after his own Life and looses nothing in the mean time by staying for it while he lives he encreases his future Glory and when he dies he goes to possess it Men of this world whose hope is only in this Life put Death far from them though it be most naturall and nigh unto them and the most certain of all future things and when Death appears and stares them in the face they behold him as a most strange and horrid thing either dying away through fear and astonishment as Nabal did or enraged like a wild Bull in a net as the famous Duke of Biron or with Iudas desperately plunge themselvs into Hell like Empedocles who cast himself quick into Mount Aetna The best of them look upon Death as an indifferent thing as Martial concludes his Happy Life Summum nec metuas diem nec optes But to me saith the Apostle to live is Christ and to dy is Gain which is the best and truest enjoiment both of Life and Death XIII Of Sin SIn is the Death of Souls the Father of Perdition which like the Cici or Worm in Ionas Gourd corrupted the world almost assoon as it was made The Mystery of Iniquity is almost as wonderfull as the Mystery of Grace and Godliness that it should be so exceeding sinfull and that being such it could possibly enter into the VVorld when it was so perfectly constituted that there was no cleft or crany in it by which Sin might creep forth enter into it untill it made way for it self Before Adam by fatall experience acquired the Knowledge of Good and Evill Sin might seem an incredible thing for how could it be imagined that a reasonable Creature of perfect understanding and exact integrity made only to serv and obey his Creator and conscious that all his Happiness consisted therein should rebell against him and at once plunge himself and all his Posterity into everlasting Misery As there was no reason for Sin so neither was there any root or ground out of which it should spring only a bare Possibility of doing that which was most unreasonable and unnaturall God made Man upright but they have sought out many inventions he was fain to seek out and invent the way of undoing himself and to create Sin which God had not made But that which is most wonderfull in Sin and which hath puzled the most profound Doctors is the consideration of Gods Permission and Providence how and why he should suffer such an Enemy to himself and all his Creatures to invade the World and ruin the whole Creation It is certainly the greatest quarrell and highest blasphemy which the Divells and damned have against God that he should make them to damn them and it is the strongest argument in the corrupt minds of the sinners of this VVorld who have not yet felt the Hell of Sin that it is no such great matter as Divines would perswade them thinking that because God doth permit it therefore he will also tolerate it This is the strange and prodigious birth of Sin and the Nature of it is answerable thereunto for it is no less then the doing of that w ch we ought not to do or the not doing of that which we ought to do and what we ought not to do is in the very next degree to what we cannot do Chast Ioseph puts the one for the other How can I do this wickedness and sin against God making morall Entity and Bonity as convertible as Naturall and Gods Interdiction as restraining as his Interposition This Monster assoon as it is born is so strong and adult in mischief that it destroieth the Womb that bare it and infecteth the whole Sphere of its activity though acts of Sin make it grow yet the first birth thereof makes it a complete Body and merits an universall and eternall punishment It hath blasted the whole inferior world and laid the foundations of Hell it self hence are all the Evills in Nature all the disorders in Humane society and villanies of Men. The Story of the Italian who first made his Enemy deny God and then Stab'd him and so at once murdered both Body and Soul declares the perfect malignity thereof and should the dire imprecations of revengefull Spirits be alwaies executed on others we should create Divells and Hells enough to destroy all Mankind But all this is the least and lowest Evill in it the perfection thereof consists in the contrariety and enmity

distinguished and discerned by all as now the Eye doth judge of Colors Black and White Light and Darkness and every one receive according to his Deeds so that there shall not be one farthing got or lost by all this forbearance Though Hell hath most of men yet Heaven had the first who died a Martyr and God will have some of both sorts in all Ages and Parts of the World to fill both places As for wicked men Iuvenal tells us Quocunque invenias populo quocunque sub axe Though he thought a Brutus or a Cato could hardly be found in any corner of the earth but Christ tells us that better then they shall come from the East and West and sit down with Abraham Isaac and Iacob in the Kingdome of God and they in Heaven sing unto him Thou hast redeemed us unto God out of every Kindred and Tong and People and Nation As when any man hath filled up the measure of his Sin or Grace he is taken out of this world so when the whole number of Sinners and Saints shall be accomplished then shall the World it self cease and be resolved into this perfect Kingdome Christ shall have his mystical Body made of all his Saints as so many members of severall proportions and the Divell shall have his made up of sinners of all sorts and Sizes and God shall be perfectly glorified in both God made the first world in order measure and weight much more this second world which must be most perfect and perpetuall The perfection of this perfection and that wherein God is most glorified is the salvation of Man therefore as the first man that died was saved so the dead in Christ shall rise first though there shall be more of the damned which is also to set forth the singular and extraordinary Grace of God toward the blessed yet there is greater manifestation of Gods Glory in them that are saved then in the other Justice is equally ballanced by rewarding the good and punishing the bad but the saving of one Sinner which is an act of free Grace and Bounty far exceeds both and damnation which is but a due punishment holds no proportion with it There is more merit in the blood of Christ by which we are saved then demerit in the Divells and all the damned A Christian enjoies this day of Judgement by a constant and joifull expectation thereof which is so terrible unto others and as God will then reduce all the confusions of this world into a state of perfection so shall all the reproches and sufferings of the Saints end in eternal Glory and Blessedness XIX Of Hell HEll is the Executioner of Gods last Judgment against Sinners the Nadir of the new World as Heaven is the Zenith Paul the 3 d on his death bed said he should shortly be resolved of three things whereof he had ever much doubted Whether there were a God an Immortality and a Hell or no and indeed we can hardly deny the last unless we also deny the first God who is the great Judge will not only pass sentence which is but an Idea of Justice but also execute it upon the damned which is the life and existence thereof Therefore every Religion hath instituted some kind of Heaven and Hell places of reward and punishment sutable to it self and the more pure and spirituall the Religion is the more exact are the Heaven and Hell belonging to it for as it deals with God himself so it doth with his Justice and Mercy The Barbarous Nations suppose that after Death they shall be transported beyond I know not what Mountains and there receiv some childish rewards The Poets have their Elysium and Tartarus and have furnished them with severall kinds of Pleasures and Pains The Turks fansy a Paradise of all carnall Delights and a place of corporeall Torments very gross and sensuall neerer Poetry then Christianity The Papists acknowledge a true Heaven and Hell but as they deal with all other parts of Religion so to these they add some Suburbs certain Limbo's and Purgatories of their own invention But the Scriptures set forth the true Heaven and the true Hell in a most perfect manner becommig the Mercy and Justice of an Infinite God and befitting the Spiritual nature of the Creatures capable thereof Wicked men perswade themselvs that God who made them will not damn them or at most that they shall only suffer to the purging away of their Sin and then afterward Vbi mille rotam volvere per annos as Origen held even of the Divells they shall be released because their Sins cannot hurt God therefore they think God will not hurt them Thou thoughtest saith God I was altogether such a one as thy self but I will reprove thee and set thy sins in order before thine Eies He is so far from any such blind and dull negligence that he will bring forth all their sins and set every one of them in order attired with all their Circumstances and exactly proportion punishments to them by a most just and equall compensation He who would suffer none to escape in this life whom he had cursed with a temporall Curse but most severely punished the foolish pity of Saul in sparing Agag and Achan for reserving only a wedge of Gold and a Babylonish Garment of the spoil of that execrated City who drowned the old World with a Deluge and saved only eight Persons in the Ark will certainly in a most exact manner execute his great Anathema and finall doom against Sinners whereof those former examples seem to be but the types and the evidences of his severe wrath the perfection whereof is reserved for Hell These things are no Monkery nor Christian Poetry no Bruta fulmina but most certain truths grounded on Reason and Scripture God is not slack as men count slackness nor rigid as they count rigor but as he perfectly hates Sin so he will perfectly punish it and go to the very utmost Apex and Puntilio of Justice that so his Justice may be manifested to the utmost Hell is the privation of all Good things depriving the irreligious Cardinall at once both of his part in Paris and of his part in Paradise There the voluptuous Dives hath not the least drop of water to cool the tip of his tong but is exprobrated and tormented aswell with the remembrance of the good things which he formerly enjoied as of the evill thing he suffers But Heaven it self is that which doth infinitely provoke the envy of the Divells and the Damned making the great Tyrants and cruell Persecuters of the world to gnash their teeth when they behold a poor Lazarus whom thay disdained to diet with their dogs advanced to so high a Glory and trampling on their captive necks Hence they conceiv as much torment as they see the Saints enjoy of bliss for this is the nature of perfect Envy to be as much vexed in it self as it apprehendeth Happiness in another Coelum est