Selected quad for the lemma: fire_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
fire_n	air_n	earth_n	world_n	3,166	5	4.7166	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
B02782	The history of Scotland from the year 1423 until the year 1542 containing the lives and reigns of James the I, the II, the III, the IV, the V : with several memorials of state during the reigns of James VI and Charles I : illustrated with their effigies in copper plates. / by William Drummond of Hauthornden ; with a prefatory introduction taken out of the records of that nation by Mr. Hall of Grays-Inn.	Drummond, William, 1585-1649.; Gaywood, Richard, fl. 1650-1680.; Hall, Mr.	1696 (1696)	Wing D2199A; ESTC R175982	274,849	491

with so short a course of time How like is that to Castles or imaginary Cities raised in the Sky by Chance-meeting Clouds Or to Gyants modelled for a sport of Snow which at the hoter looks of the Sun melt away and ly drowned in their own moisture Such an impetuous vicissitude towseth the estates of this World Is it knowledge But we have not yet attained to a perfect understanding of the smallest Flower and why the Grass should rather be green than red The Element of Fire is quite put out the Air is but water rarified the Earth moveth and is no more the Center of the Universe is turned into a Magnes Stars are not fixed but swim in the Ethereal spaces Comets are mounted above the Planets some affirm there is another World of Men and Creatures with Cities and Towers in the Moon the Sun is lost for it is but a cleft in the lower Heavens through which the light of the highest shines Thus Sciences by the diverse motions of this Globe of the brain of man are become Opinions What is all we know compared with what we know not We have not yet agreed about the chief good and felicity It is perhaps Artificial Cunning how many curiosities be framed by the least Creatures of Nature unto which the industry of the most curious Artizans doth not attain Is it Riches What are they but the casting out of Friends the Snares of Liberty Bands to such as have them possessing rather than possest metals which nature hath hid fore-seeing the great harm they should occasion and the only opinion of man hath brought in estimation Like Thorns which laid on an open hand may be blown away and on a closing and hard gripping wound it Prodigals mispend them wretches miskeep them when we have gathered the greatest abundance we our selves can enjoy no more thereof than so much as belongs to one man what great and rich men do by others the meaner sort do themselves Will some talk of our pleasures It is not though in the fables told out of purpose that pleasure in hast being called up to Heaven did here forget her apparel which Sorrow thereafter finding to deceive the World attired her self with And if we should say the truth of most of our Joys we must confess they are but disguised sorrows the drams of their Honey are sowred in pounds of Gall remorse ever ensueth them nay in some they have no effect at all if some weakning grief hath not preceded and forewent them Will some Ladies vaunt of their beauty That is but skin-deep of two senses only known short even of Marble Statues and Pictures not the same to all eyes dangerous to the Beholder and hurtful to the Possessor an enemy to Chastity a thing made to delight others more than those which have it a superficial lustre hiding bones and the brains things fearful to be looked upon growth in years doth blast it or sickness or sorrow preventing them Our strength matched with that of the unreasonable Creatures is but weakness all we can set our eyes on in these intricate mazes of life is but vain perspective and deceiving shadows appearing far otherwise afar off than when enjoyed and gazed upon in a near distance If death be good why should it be feared And if it be the work of nature how should it not be good For nature is an Ordinance and Rule which God hath established in the creating this Universe as is the Law of a King which cannot err Sith in him there is no impotency and weakness by the which he might bring forth what is unperfect no perverseness of will of which might proceed any vicious action no ignorance by the which he might go wrong in working being most powerful most good most wise nay all-wise all-good all-powerful He is the first Orderer and marshalleth every other Order the highest Essence giving essence to all other things of all causes the cause he worketh powerfully bounteously wisely and maketh his Artificial Organ nature do the same How is not death of Nature Sith what is naturally generate is subject to corruption and such an harmony which is life rising from the mixture of the four Elements which are the Ingredients of our Body cannot ever endure the contrariety of their qualities as a consuming Rust in the baser Metals being an inward cause of a necessary dissolution Again how is not death good Sith it is the thaw of all those vanities which the frost of Life bindeth together If there be a satiety in Life then must there be a sweetness in Death The Earth were not ample enough to contain her off-spring if none died in two or three Ages without death what an unpleasant and lamentable Spectacle were the most flourishing Cities For what should there be to be seen in them save bodies languishing and courbing again into the Earth pale disfigured faces Skeletons instead of men And what to be heard but the exclamations of the young complaints of the old with the pittiful cries of sick and pining Persons There is almost no infirmity worse than age If there be any evil in death it would appear to be that pain and torment which we apprehend to arise from the breaking of those strait bands which keep the Soul and Body together which sith not without great stuggling and motion seems to prove it self vehement and most extream The senses are the only cause of pain but before the last Trances of Death they are so brought under that they have no or very little strength and their strength lessening the strength of pain too must be lessened How should we doubt but the weakness of sense lesseneth pain sith we know that weakned and maimed parts that receive not nourishment are a great deal less sensible than the other parts of the body And see that old decrepit persons leave this World almost without pain as in a sleep If bodies of the most sound and wholsom constitution be these which most vehemently feel pain It must then follow that they of a distemperate and crasie constitution have least feeling of pain and by this reason all weak and sick bodies should not much feel pain for if they were not distempered and evil complexioned they would not be sick That the Sight Hearing Taste Smelling leave us without pain and unawares we are undoubtedly assured and why should we not think the same of the Feeling That which is capable of feeling are the vital Spirits which in a man in a perfect health are spread and extended through the whole body and hence is it that the whole Body is capable of pain but in dying bodies we see that by pauses and degrees the parts which are furthest removed from the heart become cold and being deprived of natural heat all the pain which they feel is that they do feel no pain Now even as before the sick are aware the vital spirits have withdrawn themselves from the whole extention of the body to

they impurple not the winter and the Roses keep their season though they disclose not their beauty in the Spring Empires States Kingdoms have by the doom of the Supreme Providence their fatal Periods great Cities lye sadly buried in their dust Arts and Sciences have not only their Ecclipses but their warnings and deaths the ghastly wonders of the world raised by the ambition of ages are overthrown and trampled some Lights above not idly intitled Stars are loosed and never more seen of us The excellent Fabrick of this Universe it self shall one day suffer ruin or a change like a ruin and poor Earthlings thus to be handled complain But is this Life so great a good that the loss of it should be so dear unto Man If it be the meanest Creatures of Nature thus be happy for they live no lesse than he If it be so great a felicity how is it esteemed of Man himself at so small a rate that for so poor gains nay one disgraceful word he will not stand to lose it What excellency is there in it for the which he should desire it perpetual and repine to be at rest and return to his old Grand-mother Dust Of what moment are the labours and actions of it that the interruption and leaving off of them should be to him distastful and with such grudging lamentations received Is not the entering into Life weaknesse The continuing sorrow In the one here is exposed to all the injuries of the Elements and like a condemned trespasser as if it were a fault to come to the light no sooner born than mancled and bound in the other he is restlesly like a Ball tossed in the Tenis-Court of this World when he is in the brightest Meridian of his glory there mistereth nothing to destroy him but to let him fall his own height a reflex of the Sun a blast of wind nay the glance of an eye is sufficient to undo him How can that be any great matter which so small instruments and slender actions are Masters of His body is but a mass of discording humors boiled together by the conspiring influences of Superior lights which though agreeing for a trace of time yet can never be made uniform and kept in a just proportion To what sickness is it subject unto beyond those of the other creatures no part of it being which is not particularly infected and afflicted by some one nay every part with many so that the life of divers of the meanest creatures of nature hath with great reason by the most wise been preferred to the natural life of man And we shall rather wonder how so fragil a matter should so long endure than how so soon decay Are the actions of the most part of men much differing from the exercise of the Spider that pitcheth toyls and is tapist to prey on the smaller Creatures and for the weaving of a scornful web eviscreateth it self many daies which when with much industry finished a tempestuous puffe of wind carrieth away both the work and the worker Or are they not like the plaies of Children Or to hold them at their highest rate as is a May-Game or what is more earnest some study at Chesse every day we rise and lie down apparel and disapparrel our selves weary our bodies and refresh them which is a circle of idle Travels and labours like Penelopes task unprofitably renewed Some time we are in a chase after a fading Beauty now we seek to enlarge our bounds increase our treasure feeding poorly to purchase what we must leave to those we never saw or happily to a Fool or a Prodigal heir raised with the wind of Ambition we Court that idle name of Honour not considering how they mounted aloft in the highest ascendant of Earthly Glory are but like tortured Ghosts wandring with golden fetters in glistering Prisons having fear and danger their unseparable executioners in the midst of multitudes rather garded than regarded they whom opake imaginations and inward melancholy have made weary of the world though they have withdrawn themselves from the course of vulgar affairs by vain contemplations curious searches are more disquieted and live a life worse than others their wit being too sharp to give them a taste of their present infelicity and to increase their woes while they of a more shallow and simple conceit have want of knowledge and ignorance of themselves far a remedy and antidote against all the calamities of life What Camelion what Euripe what Moon doth change so often as man he seemeth not the same person in one and the same day what pleaseth him in the morning is in the evening unto him distastful Young he scorns his childish conceits and wading deeper in years for years are a Sea into which he wadeth until he drown he esteemeth his Youth Unconstancy Rashnesse Folly Old he begins to pitty himself plaining because he is changed that the world is changed like those in a Ship which when they launch from the shore are brought to think the shore doth flye from them When he is freed of evil in his own estate he grudges and vexes himself at the happiness and fortunes of others he s pressed with care for what is present with sorrow for what is past with fear for what is to come nay for what will never come as in the eye one tear forceth out another so makes he one sorrow follow upon a former and every day lay up stuff of grief for the next The Air the Sea the Fire the Beasts be cruel executioners of man yet Beasts Fire Sea and Air are pittyful to man in comparison of man for more men are destroyed by men than by them all What scorns wrongs contumelies imprisonments torments poysons receiveth man of man What engines and new works of death are found forth by man against man What Laws to thrall his liberty Fantasies and scarbugs to inveigle his reason Amongst the Beasts is there any that hath so servile a lot in anothers behalf as Man Yet neither is content nor he who reigneth nor he who serveth The half of our life is spent in Sleep which hath such a resemblance to death and often it separates as it were the Soul from the body and teacheth it a sort of being above it making it soar beyond the Sphear of sensual delights and attain Knowledge unto which while the body did awake it could scarce aspire And who would not rather than abide chained in his loathsom galey of the world sleep ever that is dye having all things to one Stay be free from those vexations misadventers contempts indignities and many anguishes unto which this life is invasseled and subdued and when looking unto our greatest contentment and happiness here seemeth rather to consist in the being released from misery than in enjoying of any great good What have the most eminent of mortals to glory in Is it Greatness Who can be great on so small a round as is this Earth and bounded