Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	child_n	lord_n	love_v	5,479	5	6.4086	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50157	Right thoughts in sad hours representing the comforts and the duties of good men under all their afflictions; and particularly, that one, the untimely death of children: in a sermon delivered at Charls-town, New England; under a fresh experience of that calamity.	Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728.	1689 (1689)	Wing M1147; ESTC R220434	24,043	64

be God that has left me this But once more Is the gone Infant an only Child Are we now ready to sigh All is gone Nay Thou hast but a poor All if this were All. I hope thy only Child is not thy only Ioy. If thou hast ever passed through the New Birth the sense of thy Soul is One Iesus is worth Ten Children yea One Christ is worth Ten Worlds What tho' all thy Candles are put out The Sun the Sun of Righteousness is arising to thy Soul for ever An undone Man art thou indeed that hast thy little Glass of Water spil'd or spoil'd while thou hast a Fountain a Living Fountain running by thy Door The blessed God calls thee My Child and that is infinitely better than A Name of Sons and of Daughters Finally Have we any Doubts about the Eternal Salvation of the Children which we have Bur●ed out of our sight Indeed as to grown Children there is often too sad cause of suspicion or solicitude and yet here the Soveraign disposals of God must be submitted unto Besides Thô it may be we could not see such plain Marks and Signs of Grace in our Adult Children as we could have wished for nevertheless they might have the Root of the matter in them There are many Serious Gracious Well-inclined young People who conceal from every body the Evidences of their Repentance the Instances of their Devotion You cannot tell what the Lord did for the Souls of your poor Children before he took them out of the World. Perhaps they sought they found Mercy between the Stirrup and the Ground The Child of a Godly Parent is not to be despaired of thô turned off the Gallows But as to young Children the Fear of God will take away all matter of Scruple in the Owners of them Parents Can you not sincerely say That you have given as your selves so your Children unto God in a Covenant never to be forgotten Can you not sincerely say That you have chosen God in Christ for the Best Portion as of your selves so of your Children Answer to this If your Children had been spar'd unto you would it not have been your care to have brought them up in the Nurture and Admonition of the Lord Would you not have used all Prayers and Pains to have engaged them unto the Service of the Living God and unto a just prejudice against all the vile Idols and vain courses of the World Then be of good cheer Your Children are in a better place a better state than you your selves are yet arriv'd unto The Faithful God had promised I will be their God as well as thy God. O say This is all my Desire thô the Lord suffer not my House to grow Those dear Children are gone from your kind Arms into the sweet Bosom of Jesus and this is by far the best of all To have Children this Day in Heaven Truly this is an Honour which neither you nor I are worthy of But so it is The King of Kings hath sent for our Children to conferr a Kingdom on them They are gone from a dark Vale of Sin and Shame they are gone into the Land of Light and Life and Love there they are with the spirits of Iust men made perfect there they serve the Lord Day and Night in His Temple having all Tears wiped from their Eyes and from thence methinks I hear them crying aloud unto us As well as you love us we would not be with you again weep not for us but for your selves and count not your selves at Home till you come to be as We for ever with the Lord. I have done The fit Epitaph of a Dead Infant That That alone is enough to be the Solace of a Sad Parent Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven FINIS Extract of a Letter Westfield 14 th 6 M. 1686. I Am sorry to hear that God hath laid you under that Exercise you spake of in your first Letter in the Death of Children But if Heathenish Men could take their little Babes and burn them in the red Fire in Love and Honour to their Idol-God the Devil how should we who have Hope in God blush at the least Heart-risings against such Determinations as are made by his all-disposing Providence whereby he picks and chooses what Flowers please him best We have nothing too sweet for Him. I sometimes have been refresh'd in like Cases by such Thoughts as these Viz. I pausing on 't this sweet refresh'd my thought Christ would in Glory have a Flower sweet prime And having Choice chose this my branch forth brought Lord tak 't I thank Thee Thou tak'st ought of mine It is my Pledge in Glory Part of me Is glorifi'd in it now Lord with Thee Grief or'e would flow and Nature fault would find Were not thy Will my Spell Charm Ioy and Gem That as I said I say Take Lord they 're thine I piece-meal pass to Glory doe in them I joy may I sweet flowers for Glory breed Whether Thou gett'st them fresh or lett'st them seed E. T.

the Lord. Once more Suppose God should withdraw the light of his Countenance from your inward Man still say The Lord shall be my God my God even when he forsaketh me Still say I will fear the Lord and obey his Voice tho I walk in Darkness and shall see no Light. Happy is the Afflicted Man that is a thus Resolved Man. The followers of these Counsels may boldly and safely lay claim to all the Comforts which have this day been set before the Heirs of Consolation The special Case But there is a more special Exhortation to be pressed which may give a Period unto this Discourse Let not the loss of Children particularly as a thing Against us cause in us any irregular Discomposures The loss of Children did I say Nay let me recal so harsh a Word the Catachresis is a little too hard for the Language of a Christian. The Children which we count Lost are not so The Death of our Children is not the Loss of our Children when all the Losses of Iob were made up with Doublings yet the Number of his Children need not be doubled in the Restoration Our Children are not Lost but given back they are not Lost but sent before In such a Dialect have the Sager Heathen sometimes talked of this Affliction and shall the professors of Christianity with bitter Groans enter this among their Losses My Children are Dead O tell it not at Athens publish it not at Rome lest the Heathen Philosophers hiss at our weakness at our Folly Well this is the Calamity which many of you at some time or other have experience of The Death of Children this is a thing which the Children of Iacob seldome escape a resemblance of their Father in Many carry themselves under the tryal as if A Death of Vertue yea as if A Death of Reason had therewithal befallen them but recollect your selves O dejected Christians and be not like them that Mourn without Hope this day Let Bereaved Parents be yet Believing Parents the Voice of the great God that formed all things is unto them that in Ier. 31. 16. Refrain thy Voice from Weeping and thine Eyes from Tears for thy Work shall be Rewarded saith the Lord. Let the Thoughts which have been this day tendered unto our Improvement gloriously compose and settle our Royled minds under this Affliction Let us not say This thing is Against us but let us say The Lord that hath given hath also taken away blessed be the name of the Lord. It is indeed very true That this Affliction is none of the most easie to be born the Heart of a Parent will have peculiar Passions working in it and racking of it at such a time as this Thô there be greater Sorrows than those with which we follow a Child unto the Grave I bless God it is a more bitter thing to say My Sin is mighty or to say My Soul is guilty than it is to say My Child is Dead that moan I have pierced my Saviour is more Heart-wounding than to Mourn as one mourneth for a First-born Yet few outward Earthly Anguishes are equal unto these The Dying of a Child is like the Tearing off a Limb unto us But O remember That if ever we had any Grace in our Souls we have e're this willingly pluck'd out a Right Eye and cut off a Right Hand for the sake of God. Why should we not then at the Call of God readily part with a Limb and leave Him room to say Now I know that thou fearest me because thou hast not withheld thy Child when I called for it It was from God that we did Receive those dear Pledges our Children and it is to God that we Return them We cannot quarrel with our God if about those Loans he say unto us Give them up you have had them long enough We knew what they were when first we took them into our Arms We knew that they were Potsherds that they were Mortals that the Worms which usually do kill them or at least will eat them are but their Names-sakes and that a Dead Child is a sight no more surprizing than a broken Pitcher or a blasted Flower But we did not we do not know What they might be in case they were continued among the Living on the Earth We cannot tell whether our Sons would prove as Plants grown up in their Youth and our Daughters as Corner-stones polished after the similitude of a Palace or whether our Sons might not like Isaac's Son do those things that would be a grief of Mind unto us and our Daughters like Iephta's Daughter be of them that Trouble us Christians let us be content that our wise and good God should Carve our Portion for us he will appoint us none but a goodly Heritage Our Temptation is no more than what is common to Men yea and to good Men. The biggest part of those Humane Spirits that are now beholding the Face of God in Glory are such as dwelt in the Children of Pious people departed in their Infancy And what have we to say why we should not undergo it as well as they Was the Infant whose Decease we do deplore one that was very Pretty one that had pretty Features pretty Speeches pretty Actions Well at the Resurrection of the Iust we shall see the dear Lambs again the Lord Jesus will deal with our dead Children as the Prophets Elijah and Elisha did by those whom they Raised of Old he will bring them to us recovered from the pale Jaws of Death and how Amiable how Beautiful how Comely they will then be no Tongue is able to express or Heart conceive Tho' their Beauty do Consume in the Grave yet it shall be Restored it shall be Advanced when they shall put off their Bed-cloths in the Morning of the day of God. Again Was the Infant now lamented very suddenly snatch'd away and perhaps Awfully too not meerly by a Convulsion but by Scalding by Burning by Drowning by Shooting by Stabbing or by some unusual Harm Truly it is often so that the quicker the Death the better It is more desirable for our Children to feel but a few Minutes of Pain than it is for them to lye Groaning in those exquisite Agonies which would cause us even our selves to wish that the Lord would take them out of their Misery As for any more grievous and signal circumstance attending of our Dying Children our best course will be to have it said of us They ceased saying The Will of the Lord be done As the Love or Wrath of God is not certainly declared in so our Grief before him should not be too much augmented by such things as these And it is a favour if so much as one of our Children be left alive unto us Let not the sense of one Trouble swallow up the sense of a Thousand Mercies The Mother from whom a violent Death has taken one of her two Children may immediately Embrace the other and say Blessed