Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	affection_n	great_a	soul_n	3,163	5	4.7202	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46806	Exodus, or, The decease of holy men and ministers consider'd in the nature, certainty, causes, and improvement thereof : a sermon preach't Sept. 12. 1675 : by occasion of the much lamented death of that learned and reverend minister of Christ, Dr. Lazarus Seaman ...	Jenkyn, William, 1613-1685.	1675 (1675)	Wing J638; ESTC R18544	27,881	62

rather than a loss by Doctor Seaman's decease 5. Must Ministers die Pray for them to him that hath the power of Life and Death It was Paul's great Prayer to be pray'd for 'T was through Prayer that he trusted to be given to them Phil. 2.2 'T will be your deserved trouble when your faithful Ministers die that you while they lived pray'd no more for and profited no more by them and these two have a common Conjunction Prayer is the mean to get Ministers when we want them and to keep them when we have them 6. Must Ministers die Maintain them while they stay The unkind World storms them do not you starve them or hinder them from Studying by your neglecting to supply them I neither speak nor have cause to speak in this kind for my self but for my Brethrens-sake I cannot be silent Make that Proverb cease London loves a Cheap Gospel The best of Ministers walk in the flesh acknowledg this as your priviledg but such as points to your Duty If they die let not your penuriousness be the disease of which they die Consider they will not long be chargeable 7. Lastly Must the best of Ministers dye Be willing to follow them The sweetest Flowers wither soonest God takes away the best of his Servants his Enochs often hastily why do we love so much then to linger behind We should like the world the less while we stay and the les● to stay in it because holy men and Ministers so speedily forsake it We delight not in a room without furniture nor in an house that hath only naked walls Sanctity is the best furniture of souls and Saints of places both for use and ornament why do we then love so much to stay when they are taken down And of all others we Ministers methinks should be most willing to follow our Brethren and dear Companions in the Ministry by long acquaintance frequent and indearing visits sweet innocent chearfulness fraternal counfels learned debates prayer yea promises and re-promises of prayer of late so nearly linkt and intimately twisted to and with us Sometimes methinks when I recall them I cannot the memories of the great Gouge and Gataker the holy and delightful Whitaker the prudent Calamy that man of Prayer Ash and of Tears Nalton that sweet name and man of affection Love whose great love to me was match'd with nothing more than my fidelity to him and I would kiss even the feet though else I perfectly despise the tongue of Calumny would they be which yet they never durst be the bearers to me of the least proof to the contrary also of learned Cranford true-hearted Taylor victorious Vines laborious and upright Jackson richly adorned Drake who knew every thing better than his own rare accomplishments Marshal that Master in the art of preaching Burroughs another great ornament of the Pulpit judicious and painful Caryl that great Pattern of industry and sanctity Doctor Wilkinson and now lastly the profound Doctor Seaman When I say I recall the memories of these now blessed Worthies I am ready to say Lord why do I long no more to get among them and yet what are these to Jesus Christ for drawing out my affection and longings for Heaven in whom are centred all the excellencies of these and of all those millions of Saints that have been from the beginning of the world that now are or ever shall be and compared to him are no more than the faint and feeble flame of the smallest Candle to the Sun when shining forth in greatest glory and without whom Heaven it self with all its other furniture of Saints and Angels deckt with the most shining Attire of all their possible perfections would be but as a sheet of Cyphers without a figure and could entertain us only with pleasures in the notion and delights of meer Imagination 2. I shall shut up this Point concerning the decease of godly Ministers with but naming a second Use by way of Relief and Refreshment For 1. Though the Prophets of God do die yet the God of those Prophets never dies He is the living God and only hath immortality Though the Streams be dried up the Fountain hath a constant fulness out of which the faithful may draw all supplies of Grace and Comfort by a due improvement of the Promises and keeping up Communion with God who obligeth us indeed to the participation of the Ministry when we may enjoy it yet never tied himself from exhibiting to his people even in the driest Wilderness the sweetest and fountainous delights of special grace and goodness 2. Though the Propets die yet the Souls of the Prophets die not Their decease is the Exodus or departure of their Souls to God with whom they rest for ever after their short labours in this troublesome World The Jewel is laid up in a better state than when it was in the torn feeble Casket of their Bodies 3. Though the Prophets die yet in a sense the sons of the Prophets die not There shall be successively a Ministry and Ministers to the end of the World Christ hath promised to be with them and therefore certainly they shall be even to that period His Ordinances shall continue till the Lord come and therefore there shall be dispensers of them He will have an House always and therefore Stewards ever in it Let the Devil and Antichrist rage and puff never so furiously they shall never extinguish the light of the Ministry Could they have accomplisht that design it had been done above a thousand years ago 4. Though the Prophets die yet their memory dies not The fragrancy of their names like a precious Ointment breathes forth even after yea by the breaking the brittle boxes of their bodies Their heavenly Instructions or Writings or Examples at least live when they are dead And thus this eminent Servant of Christ dies not 5. Though the Prophets die yet their Prophesies do not die Though they pass away as a wind yet their words neither are but wind nor pass away as such Their word whereby they convert Souls dies not as to the effect thereof Grace in the Soul Their threatning words for sin die not The Prophets do they live for ever Zech. 1.5 But my words and my statutes which I commanded by my Servants the Prophets did they not take hold of your fathers The Word of God even in this sense may be said not to be bound namely to the abode of the Prophets upon Earth Threatned Sinners shall know by feeling the Truth threatned that they have had a Prophet among them 3. In the third and last place we considered these words After my decease as intending the season designed by Peter for benefiting the Church and that was after his decease And from this my third and last Observatian is It is the Duty of the servants of God especially Ministers to endeavour that they may savingly benefit others even after their deaths The things that thou hast heard of me commit

to faithful men saith Paul to Timothy 2 Tim. 2.2 Upon which words Reverend Calvin well notes Here the Apostle shews Quantum sit solicitus de propaganda sana doctrina ad posteros His sollicitousness to propagate sound Doctrine to Posterity and that the Servant of Christ must not only quamdiu vivit while he lives labour to preserve the purity of Doctrine sed quam longissime ejus cura studiam se extendere poterit as far as ever his care and study should be able to extend The like some Learned men have observed upon 1 Tim. 6.14 Keep this Commandment without spot and unrebukable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ No faithful Servant of Christ is willing that the fruit of his Endowments or Employments should die with him but that they may live when he is dead for the furthering your Salvation that Instructions may abide with you to inform you Exhortations to quicken you Examples if holy to be imitated by you his sufferings for the Truth to strengthen and confirm you in the Truth thereby sealed And this is their Duty First That thereby they may keep up the name of God and promote his glory in the World This we should desire may be done after our death yea by it It was excellent Counsel of Luther Disce mori ut vivat Christi gloria Learn to die that the glory of Christ may live If Christ may increase by or after our decrease our very diminution should be our Option whatever makes Christ great should please us The end of living or dying is Gods glory if living or dying we are the Lords our living and dying should be to the Lord we should serve our generation that the generations after us may serve him 2. Hereby the Servants of God best provide for their own names 'T is this that makes our names to be a sweet Perfume to Posterity and gives them as much of Eternity as in this World they are capable of obtaining The rotting of the name is a wicked mans Curse and the preservation of our memories by doing good is both a Duty and a Blessing As an useless unserviceable person is dead while he lives so service is that that makes us live when we are dead and makes the places where we lived like the Civet-box when the Civet is taken out of it to savour of our holy Endeavours when we our selves are gone from and out of them 3. Thirdly Love to Souls makes this a Duty Regard to these must be lengthened beyond the length of our lives A Servant of Christ must do good to as many as he can 'T is both his duty and disposition Paul tells us the design of all his condescensions was that he might gain the more 1 Cor. 9.19 No godly man needs or wishes to make a Monopoly of Heaven Every Saint loves Company to Glory he loves to be saved surely but not solitarily 'T is this that should be the great motive to writing to benefit others after our decease The Pen hath as one speaks the greatest Auditories and the advantage of levening Posterity with Holiness and it hath given the deepest wounds to Antichrist and been the best Antidote against Heresies 'T is a holy Covetousness to crave the saving of many both while we live and after death Besides this is a kind of countermining of Satan who after the death of able Instruments labours most to pervert the Truth and to subvert Souls After my departure saith Paul Acts 20.29 grievous Wolves shall enter in among you not sparing the flock 4. Fourthly The best in their life-time have done too little for the good of Souls How small is the number of those we have brought to Heaven compared with those that for ought we know we have undone for ever by our sinful Examples and other encouragements to sin There may be several that shall be saved who have occasioned the damnation of others by their sinful and scandalous carriages The colder the Winter hath been the hotter say some the Summer is like to be so the more benummed and frozen our endeavours for saving of Souls have been formerly the hotter should our Divine Zeal be afterwards to save them Never did a bad man do more against Christ than Paul did before his Conversion but never did a good man do more for him than Paul did afterwards I would to God saith he that all that hear me were such as I am As much as in me is Rom. 1.15 I will preach the Gospel I will gladly spend and be spent 2 Cor. 12.15 The grace of God was exceeding abundant in that faith and love 1 Tim. 1.14 which answered the former to his infidelity the latter to his persecution 5. Fifthly The reward that godly men and Prophets expect is Everlasting It shall last longer than their longest usefulness can do their Crown shall never fade away Why then should their helpfulness to Souls be short upon earth since their happiness in Heaven shall be perpetual And 't is the opinion of some That the Saints in Heaven have an addition made to their happiness there by the Conversion of every Soul that is converted by their means after their departure 6. Lastly In some regards they may do good to Souls after their decease with less disadvantage than they could while living upon earth for while here they lived their bodily presence and speech was weak and contemptible their outward man their constant familiar Converse with a people made them the more neglected But these hinderances after death are removed people then being ready to entertain more honourable thoughts of them than when they lived Every advantage for doing good should be embraced The higher thoughts any have of us the higher thoughts we should labour that thereby they may have of Christ Paul his bodily presence was despicable but how greatly have his labours benefited Posterity 1. For the Use of this Point 1. Heinous is the impiety of those who so live that they do more hurt to Souls after their death than ever they did while they lived whose practical immoralities and heretical opinions being transmitted to posterity prove its bane and poyson I might instance in Arrius Pelagius Socinus Arminius and other Innovators who by their Writings have perverted more since they left the world than ever they did by their tongues while they were in it and what rebuke I give to Heterodox Writings is as due to those Heterodox by some so called Practices of impiety wherewith men are destructive to those who follow their Examples in after-ages Our practices while we live should be so holy and exemplary that when we dye we may not be asham'd to say we desire that after our decease these things may be remembred Who ever heard of any impure Sensualist or any infamous for immoralities to be so senslesly impudent as to say Let posterity have these things always in remembrance for by the same reason that they desire to hide their impieties

instructed for the Kingdom of Heaven but one whose tongue was the Pen of a ready writer 5. Once more He was a person of great stability and steadiness in the truth not a reed shaken with the winde nor had he menstruam fidem as Tertul. speaks a Faith as changeable as the Moon Neither Musick nor Furnace Flatteries nor Threats could entice or affright him from the truth I am confident he valued one truth of Christ above all the wealth of both the Indies he was not a silken Diotrephes that would debauch his Conscience for a Preferment In all times Doctor Seaman contended for the same Verities which will always be the same let times and interest be never so changeable Thirdly Let us view this excellent person as in the capacity of a Christian or as concerned in the general practice of Christianity And so First I ever observed in him a great contentation with his estate and the allotments of Providence He was not a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Jude speaks v. 16 one that ever I heard express any complaint against the lot laid out for him by Providence He was better pleas'd in being a real Pastor to one than a nominal Pastor to a thousand Congregations and was well pleas'd in living as that worthy Woman said among his own People he was always eminent as in observation of so in submission to all publick Providences As he Asserted Providential disposal in the School in his Disputation so in his Practice and Conversation Secondly He was deeply and tenderly sensible of the state of the Church of Christ He was ever very inquisitive how it fared with the people of God in foreign parts and this not out of Athenian curiosity but out of a publick spirit of Christianity and ever had he suitable affections to the Churches condition prosperous or adverse And he was as near to Germany France yea to America in his sympathy and resentments as he was distant in place Thirdly He was eminently open-hearted and handed too to the especially Pious Poor he did Consulere tam modestiae quum inopiae and would regard the modesty of a poor man that could not be clamorous Of this I have been an observer both as to his readiness to relieve Ministers and private Christians he was ready to every good work A seasonable Grace to the present distresses of many eminent at once for Piety and Poverty also This good man as a cloud in Solomon's expression emptied himself not only by showres of Doctrine but of Charity also And there are few I am confident but going to him upon the occasion of receiving relief had their wants and expectations answered to his ability Fourthly He was industrious and indefatigable in his Calling This commends him as Scholar and Christian also Rarely did this studious Doctor allow himself any diverting recreation The precious jewel of Time how did he esteem it he would not lose the very filings thereof This I mention that he may herein be a pattern we are faln into times of as much Sensuality in practice as of Hereticalness in judgment Between the Play-houses and the Coffee-houses the Tavern and other places of sensual delights people lose that time which can never be regained Some are noted to make the time of their Mornings-draughts to last from seven or eight to one or two in the Afternoon that add as one speaks feathers to the wings of Time and make it a study to send that going which they cannot hinder from going Though it be possible not to lose time yet 't is impossible to hold and detain it Potes non perdere non potes tenere The Prodigals of time should set this frugal improver of it before them when they are prone to this foolish expensiveness Fifthly Great and admirable was his prudence in his Speech and Behaviour He was one that knew to whom he spake when to speak and how much to speak one that knew how to benefit others and yet not to insnare himself by speaking Though I know that practical Prudence to guide us in the course of our life be a different gift from and perhaps not often joyned with speculative and intellectual knowledg it being grown to a Proverb that the greatest Scholars are not always the wisest men yet both these Ornaments did eminently meet in this our Doctor His wisdom made not only his own face to shine but by example and counsel he reflected much of the lustre of it upon others And I much question whether any person in London Minister or private Christian was more frequently desired to give advice and counsel in affairs of difficulty than was Doctor Seaman His prudential reservedness was indeed by some accounted excessive severity and morosity the more was I engaged to him for his free and frequent discourses with me And yet notwithstanding this natural if we may call it severity sometimes he knew how to be very chearful though in a grave and in a Christian way The last time he was at my House where pardon great affection in making a small digression he was received by a now blessed Saint with great joy and thankfulness who yet more rejoyced to sit at this feet than to have him sit at her Table and is now nearer to him than she is to my self At that time I say he was pleas'd to allow himself that innocent chearfulness and freeness of Carriage and Expression as shewed us only how well it became him then to do so And these would have been expressed by him oftner had he not been hindered either by study or constitution 6. Lastly I shall view him in his deportment in his last great affliction by that Pain and Sickness of which he dyed His Patience in the time of his Sickness was great even to admiration and astonishment when Pains strove for victory Patience clearly won it in all his torments he seldom groaned under them but he never grumbled against him that sent them This our Lazarus laid open his sores before God and often complained to him yet he never complained of him In the midst of his tortures he admired free Grace Justification by Faith and advanced that God that seemed so much to depress him considering his natural temper his patience and his submission to God in his Afflictions were incomparable and imitable I never admired his Scholarship so much as I did his Patience the Lesson in which he grew so perfect in the School of Affliction His Preaching and Patience put me in mind of what St. Austin speaks concerning Christ When he Preached he Preached as a Shepherd but when he was silent he was silent as a Sheep Sive docebat c. He that spake here in this Pulpit as your Shepherd was as silent as a sheep when in his Chamber he lay under his Affliction he never made any signs of discontent When God took away the use of his Tongue his silence was not more from impotency of speaking than from the Grace of submission he puts me in mind of that Martyr who going to the fire said Lord I will stoop and thou shalt strike I will bow and thou shalt beat since my Soul is saved from eternal heats I conclude from all I have said of him First Let all lament this publick loss England lament the loss of so great an Instrument of Gods glory Cambridge lament your loss of so great a Scholar London lament your loss of so great a Divine you his People lament the loss of so faithful a Pastor I am sure his Family must lament the loss of such a Father and Master and without hypocrisie I put my self into the number of these Mourners who have parted with so dear and faithful a friend Let us all mourn and know and say That a great man a Prince in Learning and excellent Parts is faln do you not know it in this our Israel Secondly Imitate him in his Graces in his gifts I do not expect it I know you cannot especially imitate him in his great Patience and remember that counsel of the Apostle James 5.10 which I shall give you but with a small variation Take my brethren this Prophet who hath spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction and of patience Thirdly Remember his heavenly Doctrines and feed and live upon them The Flowers of Learned Authors which he fed upon in his Studies he gave you not in kind those I desire you not therefore to take from him but the nourishing milk he gave you of Holy Doctrine into which he turned those flowers taken from his Authors take it in and retain it for your spiritual nourishment and remember he did not only give you the Texts of his Sermons but the large Comment and the Exemplification of them in an heavenly imitable conversation Fourthly and lastly This is all I will say 'T is in reference unto Succession If you know of any that he did commend to you for a Successor let him be eminently in your thoughts for your acceptation or if you know of any that you are confident he would have approved of had he known him let your approbation be agreeable to what you judg by his judgment and practice would have been his I say no more but the Lord grant when you come to consider of that affair you may be unanimous and that you may have no contention but who shall shew most love to Christ to Souls to one another and to the memory of your late worthy Pastor FINIS ERRATA PAg. 5. l. 5. read suppling p. 7. l. 5. dele saith the Apostle p. 7. l. 14. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 12. l. 14. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 16. l. 13. r. profana p. 43. l. 6. r. studium