Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	good_a	life_n	see_v	9,943	5	3.4753	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63912	The middle way betwixt. The second part being an apologetical vindication of the former / by John Turner.	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.	1684 (1684)	Wing T3312A; ESTC R203722	206,707	592

acceptable and perfect will of God For why should he exhort us to so great purity both of Body and Mind if God Almighty in the work of Justification had no manner of regard to those as the Conditions of his Favour or if indeed we cannot so much as endeavour to be transformed or renewed of our selves by the exercise of the natural Faculties and Powers of our own minds but all must be oweing to an irresistible Grace by which we are carried away as by a mighty Torrent without any the least ability or strength to stemme so rapid and so impetuous a stream Whereas if we go a middle way betwixt these two extreams it will be very easie to reconcile these places of St. Paul to themselves and to one another to the faculties of men and the nature of things and to the rest of the Evangelical and Apostolical writings Follow peace with all men saith the Authour to the Hebrews c. 12. v. 14. and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. But now if a man should say that the true and genuine sense of that place is this that no man shall see the Lord but he that cannot help it or he that must see and enjoy him whether he will or no this would certainly be looked upon by all men as a most absurd and impious Interpretation and yet this is no other than the necessary consequence of the Calvinistical Doctrine if Holiness be meerly owing to an irresistible Grace and if it be not then nothing can be plainer than that there is something of Endeavour or self-activity required on our parts But you will say then how comes it to pass that St. Paul tells us so often that we are justified only by Faith and by Grace and not by works why this with a very little attention upon what hath been said already will become very plain and easie For it is one thing to say that Repentance and good works are necessary to Salvation by way of merit and another to affirm that they are required as an indispensible Condition without which God will not impute Righteousness or make application of the passion of his Son to the person of a Sinner The first of these is manifestly false because as hath been said already all we can possibly do is no more than our Duty and our best performances are accompanied with so many and so great imperfections that instead of expiating for our grosser Crimes they themselves do stand in need of an Atonement But yet after all it is true that without Holiness and without Repentance no man shall see the Lord and it is so true that even in those to whom God is pleased to extend his Mercy at the very instant of Death which we have reason to believe to be but very few yet in these there is at least required an hearty sorrow and contrition for what is past out of a due sense of the foul nature of Sin or of the heinous malignity of Disobedience and ingratitude to so good and gracious a God and there is required also such a serious and devoutly fixt resolution of living better for the future if in case it shall please God to grant us a longer Life as may be not an obligation but a motive or inducement to his infinite Goodness which in such cases as these hath great latitude of operation to accept the will for the deed Neither does it follow in the least because Repentance and Obedience are required that therefore we are not justified by Grace or by Faith only for since our Repentance and our good works have no manner of merit or Atonement in themselves it is certain that that Atonement must be wholly oweing to something else and the Scripture tells us plainly what that is namely to the sufferings of Christ upon the Cross for our Sins the merit of which sufferings is by the Grace and favour of God without any pretence or title which we have otherwise to them appli'd to every true Believer as the reward of his Faith in him by whom that expiation is wrought which Faith though it can never be unaccompani'd with good works yet it implies in its very nature so perfect a reliance upon the merit and satisfaction of Christ for Justification and Redemption as does at the same time amount to an absolute Renunciation or an utter disowning of all kind of claim and title in our selves It is almost the same case as if a Malefactor having committed something worthy of Death should yet notwithstanding in pity to the innocence of his past Life before the commission of this offence have a Reprieve allowed him to put him upon a new Tryal and see how he would behave himself for the future and though neither his past nor future deportment be so absolutely blameless as that no advantage can be taken of them yet since he endeavours to make up in his Repentance what in his obedience is defective and since he plainly acknowledges himself a debter to the justice of the Law and reposeth his only confidence not in his own uprightness or sincerity but in the goodness of his Prince or Judge he is upon these Considerations pardoned which pardon though without such Considerations and Circumstances it had not been past yet the very nature of a pardon implies a guilt in him to whom it is given and a right of punishment in him that gives it so that notwithstanding these Conditions the offender's Life is merely and entirely an effect of Mercy because notwithstanding them he might very justly have been Condemned to Die This may be sufficient to have said concerning the first of those six accounts which I have promised to give of the first rise of the Predestinarian Doctrine that it is grounded upon a mistaken Interpretation of those places of St. Paul which are opposed only to those who had too high an opinion of themselves or were not so sensible as they ought to be of the grace and favour of God towards them by sending his Son into the world to be the propitiation for their Sins and of the necessity of that Grace in order to their Justification but were by no means intended to destroy the necessity of Obedience and a good Life or to discourage our honest endeavours at Perfection how short soever they be of that mark at which they are directed but it is rather on the contrary a new obligation to watchfulness and diligence in all our Conversation that God has been pleased to apply so mercifull and so effectual a remedy to those Diseases and Dangers to which either the frailty of our natures or the perversness of our wills assisted by the malicious and crafty insinuations of degenerate Spirits do continually expose us and I dare confidently appeal to any man let him be who he will who is not enslaved past all possibility of redemption to a Spirit of Bigotry and prejudice for a party without having patience to attend to

be the better able as you read along to understand this and to make a judgment of both and therefore that you may the better compare both of them together I have added a common Index of the chief Heads of both at the latter end So that all you have to do is only by Preface in the beginning to understand Postscript and by the word following in several places to understand as much as if I had said foregoing which it is no great matter for one friend to do for another and then all is well and as it should be or if you do not like this way of interpretation though it be as good as many that come from very able Expositors and profound Divines then take your own way And though you laugh at the Title which you may do and welcome if you please yet be so just to the Argument notwithstanding as to give it that respect which it deserves I cannot pretend to add much in this place to what I have already written but because being lately injured by the malice of an ill man whom I know not and therefore forgive him unsight and unseen I did in the heat of my resentment draw up a just and true Character and representation of my self which upon second thoughts I have supprest as I have many other things to the great detriment and destruction of Pen Ink and Paper which might be imployed for better uses in which tumultuary scrible I did among other things declare my opinion as to the points in difference betwixt those whom they call in Holland the Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants so far as those points are determinable upon the Principles of nature the inserting of which in this place may do some service to the cause I have undertaken therefore I have thought fit to insert it in the words that follow and to beg of you no greater favour than what in justice I may challenge at your hands that you would read it with the same ingenuity candor and good meaning with which it was written by me For the points in Dispute betwixt the Arminian and Calvinistical Doctors I make no manner of scruple to affirm that the former of these are certainly in the right and that the latter of them by turning men into Beasts and by making it impossible for a man by his natural strength to make the least attempt at any thing that is good or to harbour the least degree of a virtuous inclination but on the contrary to be carried forth by an irresistible propensity of will to all manner of wickedness and to the highest degrees of sin as well as to the most detestable instances of it as Mr. Calvin and his Followers in so many words are pleased to do have done a very great and a very unpardonable affront to humane nature and that it would never be endured if any one man should bespatter his Neighbour at that rate at which they have taken the confidence upon them to reproach and vilify the whole race of Mankind I reckon that they are every whit as bad Philosophers as they are Divines and that since men do naturally carry different constitutions and temperaments about them by which it appears plainly that some men are by nature and by the particular happiness of their constitution more vertuously disposed than others which dispositions may either be heightned or corrupted or perfectly destroyed by difference of Company different ways of Study different courses of Life and different methods of Education Again since as some constitutions are in the general more virtuously dispos'd than others so there is none so good as not to be carried forth with a greater or lesser inclination to sin and since it appears in every man's observation that one temperament is naturally inclined to one sort or species of evil and another to another which inclinations may likewise be heightened or in a great measure conquered and subdued by the same means by which the dispositions to vertue and good manners are either cultivated or lessened or destroyed I say since these things are so in the open view and appearance of all mankind since they are so plain so manifest so undenyably certain from the daily experience both of our selves and others what can be more foolish then to say that all men are irresistibly that is equally inclined by nature to all manner of vice or to affirm that nothing but an irresistible Grace can hinder the best of men from being worse than the most fierce untameable and savage Beasts themselves as Mr. Calvin expresly does and it is no more then what does unavoidably follow from his doctrine of irresistible pravity and corruption But yet I am very far from bidding defyance to the spirit of Grace very far from sinking into the Pelagian or so much as into the Massilian or Semi-pelagian error I do believe and am taught by the word of God and by my own experience of my self and others that without the Grace of God it is impossible to do that which is truly pleasing and acceptable in his sight I believe there will always be through the confessed pravity of the best natures such a mixture of corruption by the interposition or intervention of carnal or prohibited desires by which our zeal for Goodness will be always either cool'd diverted or destroyed that even our best Actions will not be accepted of God without the assistance of his Grace to give them a beauty consummation and perfection which they could not have received from our selves I believe that as virtuous actions or dispositions cannot be perfect so much less can virtuous habits be attained without the supernatural and perpetual though not irresistible assistance of the same spirit which is as necessary to create in us sometimes good dispositions and much more good habits but always to assure and perfect them as the Death of Christ was to attone for our bad ones or his intercession to apply the merits of that death and passion to the several imperfect degrees of our repentance or amendment of life I do believe and am verily in my conscience perswaded that God who in the Creation of the world and in the admirable contrivance of it for its own preservation and for the well-being and happiness of its inhabitants hath discovered so much goodness he that in the structure of the bodies of all Animals and in the provision which he hath made for the respective subsistence of them all according to their several natures and constitutions hath plainly shewed himself to be a very merciful and Gracious Being he that hath ordered and created all things in number weight and measure he that out of nothing hath rear'd this comely Fabrick of the World so full of usefulness as well as beauty both of which do almost equally declare him to be not an angry merciless and revengeful but a serene composed benevolent and Gracious mind I say I do believe and am verily perswaded that such a