Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	bring_v	great_a	king_n	7,720	5	3.5751	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A39742	A sermon preached at Guild-Hall chapel, December the xi, 1692 before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, and Court of Aldermen / by W. Fleetwood ...	Fleetwood, William, 1656-1723.	1693 (1693)	Wing F1254; ESTC R20983	13,564	30

of God and be entirely happy But if by Accident or Industry he does grow rich his Heart and Purposes are commonly changed with his Condition or his Desires grow even with his Substance and he is still as unable to do the good he desired to do as before the Poor are still as poor and empty as they were though his Bowels still yearn on and the Man perswades himself he longs to be doing good but to his great Discomfort wants Ability This is the best of the Case That a Man with his Riches does no harm altho he does no good but it seldom rests here he is either tempted to forget God and sacrifice to his own Draggs or falls by degrees into a State of Luxury and all Excess and makes the things that should have been for his Good an Occasion of his falling and is to his cost convinced That 't is better to continue Poor with good Desires than Rich without them or with them when they come alone and that he was not made to be happy by Riches but was mistaken in the Means of compassing his End Another Man believes a Place of Honour and Authority would make up all his Wants and compleat his Happiness and thinks withal he should be capacitated to do a great deal of Service to his Country in it he should right the wronged and relieve the oppressed and do Justice to the Poor and Needy with Abundance of other notable good Turns But when he is in Honour and Authority he grows it may be proud and Insolent regards not right or wrong so much as Favour and Convenience uses his Interest and Power to private Ends and evil Purposes and is instead of being happier in that higher Station but more involved in Troubles and perplex'd in Mind And when he turns him to his inside sees he was not made for Honours and great Places and that his clambring upwards brought him not to Happiness but to the Danger of a great Fall and an uneasy Seat in the mean while Another thinks his Good might be procur'd by Oratory and the Power of Eloquence and spends his Lamps and Nights in reading the Works of the great Masters of that Faculty and turning over Cicero and Demosthenes but had better spend an Hour or two in reading of their Lives and Ends. To see to what unworthy Purposes those mighty Parts were oft abused what soul and wicked Acts those Streams of Eloquence were to wash away what Emulations Strifes Contentions and Debates they were perpetually engaged in and how fatal it was to both to speak beyond Comparison The best Tongues have the most Causes but they have commonly the worst too and if they get greater Estates they get the more ill Will and Odium with them And 't is hardly possible for them to thrive exceedingly but to the Wrong of some and the Undoing of others And who can think of being happy at the Expence of Truth and Justice with any Comfort Besides That an eloquent Tongue and fluent is an Allurement to talking much and holding up a Controversy which engages Men in Opposition to say a great many unkind Things and a great many foolish and a great many false and if true yet a great many vain and unnecessary things It puts Men on the Rack and often sharpens the Wit to a degree of Keenness that ends without great Care in Spitefulness and Ill Nature and rather than want an Answer or the making an handsom Period up the Men of Wit and Fluence either chuse or happen to lose a fast Friend to disoblige a great Man and create a powerful Enmity 'T is like a sharp and double-edg'd Knife for one piece of Service it does its Master it cuts his Fingers twice And is so far from being fitted to make Men happy that as hardly One in a Thousand attains to it so 't is hardly fit for One of an Hundred Thousand Another Man has a brave Heart and strong Sinews and fansies he is fitted for the Camp and is design'd for Happiness by Victories and Triumphs But these are commonly the Dreams of Men at Ease and the gay Results of Wine and good Company He thinks not on the Toils and Hardships of that Life he meets withal upon Experience the Straits of inconvenient Lodging unwholsom Diet and inclement Seasons the perillous Attempts the Insolence of Superiors and Inferiors Mutinies the spiteful Emulations the base and infamous Detractions the wicked Notions of Religion Morals and true Honour with the ridiculous Punctilio's of false The severe revengeful Prosecutions of their idle Quarrels the frequent Perjuries the raging Blasphemies the horrible Enormities Injustices Rapes and Bestial Villainies that commonly attend that Way of living And yet even this and all the rest of the particular Conditions I have mentioned and a great many more I have omitted are in the Opinion of the World fitted to make Men happy with the Happiness of this Life and most of them it may be in their own Natures would in some wise conduce to it if it were not for our Blindness in seeking our Ignorance in using and our Folly in abusing them But III. Though a Man should be so fortunate as to light upon what was good for him at present yet he would have no great Reason to exsult because his Good may be short-liv'd and change its Nature in a little time For who can tell a Man what shall be after him This Head does in some Measure fall in with the Other and therefore the less will serve to shew its Truth And there is no Need of proving this by Arguments or Deductions of Reason there is only Need that Men should open their Eyes and Ears and attend to the Instances that meet them every Day of private and of publick Persons Families and Kingdoms of Friends and Enemies of Strangers and Acquaintances how varying and uncertain all the Conditions of humane Life are how little any Man can promise to himself or any else the Continuance of the State he is already in what sudden Turns of Fortune thrust Men out of their Felicity which they imagined would have lasted them their Lives long how many little unforeseen unthought of Accidents disturb and quite unsettle the most fix'd and steddy Course of Happiness How one unlucky lowring Day rises and interrupts the Peace and Joy of our whole Lives and makes them set in Sorrow and Despair Boast not saith Solomon of to Morrow for thou canst not tell what a Day may bring forth Prov. 27. 1. Aemilius Paulus was the greatest and the happiest Roman in his time for many Years he had four Sons of great Hopes and thinking two of them enough to propagate his Name he gave the other two to be adopted into the bravest and the noblest Families of Rome And having conquered Perseus and his Kingdoms the Foil of four preceding Generals he brought the King and all his Children Captives to grace his Triumph and victorious Entry into Rome But mark

how Fate with them and with us the Providence of God disposes of Events The King design'd for Misery had all his Children then about him the greatest Comfort that his bad Estate could then bear and the triumphant Victor lost his eldest Son a few Days before his glorious Entry and his youngest three Days after And though all Men thought before that Perseus was the greatest and the saddest Instance of the Uncertainty of humane Happiness yet then the Scene was chang'd and all the Pity fell upon the Old and Miserable Conquerour There is no body scarce whose Knowledge or whose Reading does not furnish him with Instances enough and too many of this nature to confirm him in the Opinion That the Happiness of this Life is of a very short and uncertain Continuance and that no Man can have Reason to exult or be secure in his present State whilst liable to so many lamentable Accidents and surrounded with such Hazards Since then to conclude all these things are so since all is Vanity and Vexation of Spirit since there is no true Happiness to be found in any of those things in which Men chiefly place it What must become of us Are we brought into this World to be perpetually deluded with the Hopes of being happy yet nothing in it for to build those Hopes upon Must we wander up and down like poor bewildred Strangers in quest of what we are never likely to obtain Nature has planted in us all we find Hopes and Desires of being happy but we are left it seems to seek it where we can and to feel it our like hood-wink'd People in perpetual Maze and Winding And is there then no Answer to these Questions in the Text Yes there is And be that put these Questions gives himself a full and satisfying Answer to them all but it is so far from my Text that I must but just repeat it for it is the very last Sentence in the Book Hear the Conclusion of the whole Matter Fear God and keep his Commandments for God shall bring every Work into Judgment with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil If you desire to know what is good for Man in this Life I will tell you Fear God and keep his Commandments That is good for Man in this Life All the Days of his vain Life which he spendeth as a Shadow Though there be many things that increase Vanity yet there is something he may fasten on that has no Vanity nor carries any manner of Vexation with it and that is Fearing God and keeping his Commandments Time and Chance make mighty Work and Alteration in every other State but have no Power to interrupt and spoil the Peace and Happiness of this And as the Ignorance and great Uncertainty of what may happen argues the Vanity of all these other States and is a great Discouragement to the pursuing them so warmly and so zealously For who can tell a Man what shall be after him so the Certainty of what will follow the Neglect or the Performance of this our Duty of fearing God and keeping his Commandments is as great an Encouragement on the other hand to the doing it And that is the Certainty of Judgment For God shall bring every Work into Judgment with every secret thing whether it be good or evil So that now we know what shall be after us And knowing what is good for Man in this Life is also good for him in another we have our Answer to the Questions in the Text And since we are convinced of the Vanity of all things else let us at last attend to this divine Conclusion of the whole Matter and fear God and keep his Commandments FINIS